
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 25, 1995                   TAG: 9511270038
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

PHONE PLAN PHASES IN HEARING HELP

For millions of Americans who wear hearing aids, making a simple telephone call from a hotel, hospital or work is often a lesson in futility.

But federal regulators, working with businesses and groups representing people with hearing loss, have come up with a proposal to change that.

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday is expected to adopt the proposal, which would be fine-tuned and subject to another commission vote before becoming final.

According to FCC attorneys speaking on condition of anonymity, the proposal would require that when businesses buy new phones, they must be compatible with hearing aids. The proposal would not force businesses to immediately replace phones - a costly proposition and one of the big reasons a previous set of FCC rules in this area was suspended.

The FCC did not know precisely how many phones used by businesses are compatible with hearing aids, but regulators say millions of business phones would be covered by the plan.

Pay phones and emergency phones, by virtue of a separate FCC rule, are already compatible with hearing aids.

Under the plan, most business telephones would be hearing-aid compatible by Jan. 1, 2000, FCC attorneys said. Companies with fewer than 15 employees would be exempted.

But businesses that bought new phone equipment between 1985 and 1989 would have until Jan. 1, 2005, to install compatible ones.

This was done to accommodate businesses that brought new phones just before and right after a 1988 law requiring phones to be compatible with hearing aids.

That law, the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act, requires all phones, except cordless ones made or imported into the United States after 1989, to contain an electromagnetic coil that would benefit many - but not all - hearing-aid wearers. Cordless phones made after 1991 also would have to contain the device.

As a result, any new phones that a company would now buy contain the coil.

Because the average life of a telephone is seven years, federal regulators say the proposal would not impose heavy burdens on businesses because compliance is timed to dovetail with when businesses would need to buy new phones.

by CNB