The market for video, Internet and other relay services for the deaf could soon top $1 billion a year, up from less than $50 million in the late 1990s.
Sorenson Communications Inc., of Salt Lake City, which calls itself "the phone company for the deaf," is the dominant provider as both a videophone manufacturer and a provider of sign interpreters at video-relay call centers.
Thomas Chandler, the chief of the FCC disability-rights office, said in 2007 internal e-mails that the video-relay program was a "classic fleecing of America." The government, he said, was reimbursing companies for it at "ridiculously high rates."
A congressional committee agreed in a December 2008 report that concluded consumers were overpaying. Relay services for the deaf are paid through a surcharge on everyone's long-distance phone bills.
The FCC also has heard complaints that video-relay companies offer sweepstakes games and other incentives to a captive market of deaf users to inflate videophone usage, and thus reimbursements from an FCC-controlled fund.
For many years, business compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 was viewed as a marginal cost of doing business. Big phone companies provided a teletype service at cost and earned an 11.25 percent return on investment in equipment.
This decade, though, the FCC tried something new. It backed the brand-new video-relay industry and agreed to finance start-up business expenses, marketing, outreach training and executive compensation. The expenses were built into per-minute rates for video display.
With this opportunity, companies rushed to enter deaf-related telecom services, the largest being video.
