WASHINGTON-Consumer and industry groups are not expected to offer a clear cut fix to hearing aid interference from digital pocket telephones in the report they submit to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt next month.
But even without a magic bullet, engineers have begun to identify a variety of potential remedies to curb hearing aid interference and possibly eliminate it altogether.
Improved radio frequency shielding in phones and hearing aids and modifications to circuitry and antennas on wireless handsets can limit, though not eliminate, hearing aid interference, recent tests show.
The wireless telecommunications industry, the hearing impaired community and hearing aid equipment manufacturers have been working together for two months under the watchful eye of the FCC, to identify short- and long-term solutions to hearing aid interference so digital pocket phones do not cause a disruptive buzzing to the hearing aids of wireless subscribers and bystanders.
Working groups, which met here last week, will submit their findings next Monday to a steering committee, which will file a final report with Hundt in April. Hundt is said to want nothing less than concrete recommendations in the plan of action submitted by the industry. If that does not occur, the FCC may decide to intervene.
The suspicion that the wireless industry and hearing impaired community initially held for each other appears to be fading. The announcement by Pacific Bell Mobile Systems and Ericsson Inc. last month about developing pocket phones with built-in hearing aid compatibility has given both groups reason for optimism.
Donna Sorkin, executive director of Bethesda, Md.-based Self Help for Hard of Hearing People Inc., said, “we are very, very excited about that as a very positive outcome of this process.” SHHH is working in conjunction with Pac Bell and Ericsson.
Most of the 30 million cellular phones in use today are based on analog technology, which does not interfere with hearing aids. About 5 million people wear hearing aids in the United States. Some are more sensitive to pocket phones than others.
Actually, the problem is bigger than just hearing aids. Wireless industry-funded research is being done at the University of Oklahoma on pocket phone interference with other medical devices, like cardiac pacemakers. Even air bag and anti-lock braking systems in automobiles have been found to be susceptible to pocket phone emissions.
Still, problems remain. Jim Valentine, a big investor in North American Wireless Inc. (a turnkey provider of PCS systems driven by Code Division Multiple Access technology) is waging a fierce campaign to draw policymakers’ attention to a competing technology-Global System for Mobile communications-that is used throughout the world yet has been found to prompt interference to hearing aids.
Valentine contends CDMA technology, developed by Qualcomm Inc., of San Diego, is user friendly to hearing aid wearers. However, there are indications that while CDMA is less threatening to hearing aids, it has the potential to cause interference.
