WASHINGTON-Hearing disability advocates are privately furious with the wireless telecommunications industry over the agenda for this week’s conference on hearing aid interference from next-generation pocket phones and with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt for suggesting the problem can be solved by the marketplace.
Publicly, however, representatives of the nation’s 4 million-plus hearing aid users are downplaying their grievances and expressing optimism that something good will come out of the “Hearing Aid Compatibility and Access to Digital Wireless Telecommunications Summit Meeting” on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington.
“We’re really committed to making this work,” said Brenda Battat, deputy executive director of Bethesda, Md.-based Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH). “We would like providers and manufacturers to go away with the idea that access should be built into the phones from the outset.”
That has not happened in England and in other countries where digital cellular systems driven by Global System for Mobile communications technology were built and hearing aid wearers were left to deal with interference from phones.
The hearing aid community does not want that situation repeated in the United States, but it appears things are moving in that direction-apparently with the FCC chairman’s blessing.
“The reason this is complex is there are going to be thousands of different digital products rolled out over the next six to 12 months and the next five to 10 years,” Hundt told CNN News Network recently. “It’s going to be necessary to let the products come to market before we try to jump to conclusions.”
Hundt, who will keynote the conference, has vacillated between indifferent regulator-telling former Senate communications subcommittee chairman Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) last year “we don’t believe there is a serious risk of interference to hearing aids”-and activist-last year declaring himself a champion of the disabled and ordering the wireless telecommunications industry to fix hearing aid interference.
“I think the goal of the summit is to facilitate understanding, hear the other side, and as a result of that understanding, look for common ground,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Short-term solutions to hearing aid interference that have been identified include retrofitting phones with external devices like the HATIS (Hearing Aid Telephone Interconnect System) and the so-called JABRA. The extent to which hearing aids can be shielded from digital transmission pulses is unclear.
The hearing aid debate is not just between some hearing aid advocates and the wireless telecommunications industry. The issue has created a schism within the industry in view of the new, multibillion dollar equipment market for new personal communications services, pitting manufacturers like Ericsson Inc. and Nokia Corp. and operators of GSM (a unit of Time Division Multiple Access) systems against their counterparts, who’ve opted for the Code Division Multiple Access digital standard pioneered by Qualcomm Inc. of San Diego.
Motorola Inc., the world’s largest mobile communications supplier based in Schaumburg, Ill., also is a big player in the GSM wireless market overseas. In the states, the company is expected to sell wireless equipment based on both technologies.
CDMA proponents claim their technology-which is the choice of the major PCS players like the Sprint Telecommunications Venture and PCS PrimeCo L.P.-does not cause hearing aid interference in the pronounced manner exhibited by GSM wireless phones.
The wireless telecommunications industry has tried to remain technology-neutral insofar as hearing aid interference goes, choosing instead to frame the issue as part a bigger challenge to achieve electromagnetic compatibility in the new digital age.
Most of the nation’s 30 million cellular phones use analog technology, which does not interfere with hearing aids, but more and more system operators are expected to convert to digital technology in major urban areas as networks reach full capacity.
A separate concern that prompted the hearing aid community to consider pulling out of the conference, according to a source, involves demonstrating buzzing interference from a digital phone to a hearing aid. Wireless industry representatives helping to organize the summit refused to allow a demonstration at the beginning of the two-day event, when press coverage is expected to be most extensive.
Instead, a demonstration will take place Thursday afternoon when representatives from the wireless industry, disability organizations and hearing aid manufacturers break up into working groups to address short-term and long-term user and bystander interference and hearing aid compatibility issues.
Hearing aid advocates, the source said, may decide to hold a press conference independent of the summit on the first day to draw attention to the problem.
