Telecommunications Relay Service ASCII Format Requirement

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 64</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CG Docket No. 03-123; FCC 25-35; FR ID 309789]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Telecommunications Relay Service ASCII Format Requirement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) proposes to modify the Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) rules to delete the requirement that traditional, Text Telephone (TTY)-based TRS be capable of communicating with the American Standard Code for Information Interexchange (ASCII) format. The record indicates that this format is outdated and rarely used today. Deleting the rule would reduce TRS costs, eliminate an outdated regulatory requirement, and update the Commission's standards to be more consistent with current usage of TTY-based relay service. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before September 26, 2025; reply comments are due on or before October 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Pursuant to §§ 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments. Comments may be filed using ECFS. You may submit comments, identified by CG Docket No. 03-123, by the following method: • <E T="03">Electronic Filers.</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs.</E> • <E T="03">Paper Filers.</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. • Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service. <E T="03">All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission.</E> • Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. • Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. • <E T="03">People with Disabilities.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (Braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ike Ofobike, Disability Rights Office, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, at (202) 418-1028, or <E T="03">Ike.Ofobike@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">NPRM</E> ), in CG Docket No. 03-123, FCC 25-35, adopted on June 26, 2025, released on June 27, 2025. The full text of this document can be accessed electronically via the Commission's Electronic Document Manage System website at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-35A1.pdf,</E> or via the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) website at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs.</E> <E T="03">Ex Parte Rules.</E> This proceeding shall be treated as a permit-but-disclose proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. 47 CFR 1.1200 <E T="03">et seq.</E> Persons making <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies). Persons making oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations are reminded that memoranda summarizing the presentation must (1) list all persons attending or otherwise participating in the meeting at which the <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentation was made, and (2) summarize all data presented and arguments made during the presentation. If the presentation consisted in whole or in part of the presentation of data or arguments already reflected in the presenter's written comments, memoranda, or other filings in the proceeding, the presenter may provide citations to such data or arguments in his or her prior comments, memoranda, or other filings (specifying the relevant page and/or paragraph numbers where such data or arguments can be found) in lieu of summarizing them in the memorandum. Documents shown or given to Commission staff during <E T="03">ex parte</E> meetings are deemed to be written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and must be filed consistent with § 1.1206(b) of the Commission's rules. In proceedings governed by § 1.49(f) of the Commission's rules or for which the Commission has made available a method of electronic filing, written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and memoranda summarizing oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations, and all attachments thereto, must be filed through the electronic comment filing system available for that proceeding, and must be filed in their native format ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> .doc, .xml, .ppt, searchable .pdf). Participants in this proceeding should familiarize themselves with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act:</E> The Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, requires each agency, in providing notice of a rulemaking, to post online a brief plain-language summary of the proposed rule. The required summary of the <E T="03">NPRM</E> is available at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Initial Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 Analysis</HD> The <E T="03">NPRM</E> may contain proposed new or modified information collection requirements. The Commission, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork burdens, invites the general public and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to comment on the information collection requirements contained in this document, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13. In addition, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, <E T="03">see</E> 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4), the Commission seeks specific comment on how it might further reduce the information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> 1. Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), codified at section 225 of the Communications Act (the Act), as amended, requires the Commission to ensure that TRS is available, to the extent possible and in the most efficient manner, to enable people with hearing or speech disabilities to communicate with other telephone users in a manner that is functionally equivalent to voice communication service. In accordance with this directive, the Commission has adopted mandatory minimum standards for TRS. 47 U.S.C. 225(a)(3), (b)(1). Before 2000, relay services were limited to converting voice communication to text, and vice versa, and were provided via analog telephone networks, with the text being transmitted using a TTY or TTY-compatible device. Since then, the Commission has recognized other forms of TRS as eligible for compensation from the TRS Fund. To make a traditional TRS call, a TTY user calls a TRS relay center and types the number of the person he or she wishes to call. A Communications Assistant at the relay center then makes a voice telephone call to the other party to the call, and relays the call back and forth between the parties by speaking what a text user types, and typing what a voice telephone user speaks. 2. TTYs generally use the Baudot coding format, and today almost all TTY conversation is transmitted in Baudot. When the initial rules for TRS were being adopted, however, the ASCII format was widely used to transmit data and text between personal computers over the telephone network. To ensure that TTY users could access relay services using any text telephone or personal computer, the Commission required that TRS be able to transmit in both ASCII and Baudot, at any speed generally in use. 47 CFR 64.604(b)(1). 3. On August 24, 2022, T-Mobile Accessibility (T-Mobile) filed a Petition for Rulemaking asking the Commission to initiate a rulemaking to amend § 64.604(b)(1) of the Commission's rules by eliminating the reference to ASCII, on the grounds that ASCII is an obsolete and infrequently used format. On November 22, 2024, the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (Bureau) granted the current providers of TTY-based TRS conditional waivers of the ASCII requirement. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</HD> 4. The Commission proposes to delete the requirement, codified in § 64.604(b)(1) of the Commission's rules, that TTY-based relay services support the ASCII format. The record indicates that the amount of usage of TTY-based TRS in the ASCII format is exceedingly small. Based on providers' reports, it appears that total ASCII usage of TTY-based TRS did not exceed 87 minutes in April-June 2022, or approximately 0.01% of total TTY-based TRS minutes for that period. There also does not appear to be any prospect of a resurgence in usage of ASCII-based TTY. According to T-Mobile, there are no new ASCII-compatible TTY devices currently available in the market. Further, there is evidence that the ASCII requir ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━