Montana Telecommunications Access Program
Minutes:Full Committee Meeting
November 17, 2016
Montana Council on Developmental Disabilities Office
Committee Members Present: Drew Arnot, Tyler Weingartner, Jim Marks, Ron Bibler, Marilyn Daumiller, Julia Saylor, Tina Shorten, Char Harasymczuk
Committee Members Absent:Tyler Peart, Pat Ingalls
MTAP Staff Present: Barbara Varnum, Steve Johnson, Lisa Gault
Supporting and Contributing Persons Present: Emilie Banasiak, Hamilton Outreach; Lisa Furr, Hamilton Account Executive, Karie Whitlock, DET Fiscal; Trisha Smith and Stella Woodrum,Sign Language Interpreters
Visitors: Cam Tulloch, Christine Lay
Meeting called to order:
Drew Arnot called the meeting to order. Jim Marks mentioned he wanted to recognize Barbara Varnum’s length of service with the state of Montana as she just passed her 25th year of service and gifted her with a 25-year pin.
Approval of Minutes:
The minutes from the August18, 2016meeting was approved as written.
Public Comment:
No public comment.
MTAP Director’s report: Barbara Varnum
Barbara Varnum began by welcoming Tyler Weingartner to the committee as he’s taking Linda Kirkland’s position on the committee and added that he’s not able to vote as well as Ron Bibler and Jim Marks because the governor’s office has not confirmed their appointments yet.
Ms. Varnum reported that MTAP has hired Lisa Gault full-time and she began work on October 3rd, 2016. Ms. Gault has been busy working on the new case management system, entering all the client files in. Plans are to install a videophone by her desk so she will be able to answer all calls coming in, a new phone line has been put in but the videophone hasn’t been set up yet. The set up will enable the phone to ring four times and if no answer, the call will be diverted to Ms. Varnum’s phone. Ms. Varnum added that the MTAP staff have been giving out phone numbers for the Great Falls and Missoula offices to reduce having so many calls directed to the Helena office. Mention was also made about Ms. Gault attending the MAD meetings and talking about the program and there’s been a huge upsurge with people who are deaf interested in the iOS devices.
Ms. Varnum announced that Julianna Whittaker had her baby October 14, 2016 is currently on maternity leave until January. Steve Johnson has taken on Ms. Whittaker’s clients in the Kalispell area and Ms. Varnum has taken on Ms. Whittaker’s clients in the Missoula area during her absence.
The new electric case management system is going well and Ms. Varnum was hoping to have reports on the system but at the time of this meeting, all the files have not been completely input into the system. Ms. Varnum hopes by the next meeting she’ll be able to have reports to share on the system after all the files have been put into it. Ms. Varnum stated that the client files usually consist of their application, case notes and conditions of acceptances on the devices that have been distributed to the client and signed by the client. Because the files are not huge, it’s been fairly simple to input into the system and there have been very few bugs since the new case management system was installed.
The MTAP staff (minus Ms. Gault) attended the NASRA (National Association of State Relay Administrators) conference as well as the TEDPA conference in early September. Ron Bibler also attended part of the NASRA conference and business meeting. Ms. Varnum reported on an issue that was discussed at the NASRA conference regarding the FCC stating they may push the cost of IPCTS (Internet protocol captioned telephone service) to the states. The FCC has not been able to provide the states with how much that might cost if that happens and MTAP has had a contingency fund set aside in case this happens. The FCC has paid over a billion dollars nationally for IP relay and they state they cannot sustain that program. There has been concern about fraud and misuse. At the conference it was discussed about having a third-party verifier and that the consumers verify they really require a captioned phone before the phones are distributed. This can apply to Montana as the equipment distributors go into the homes and Ms. Varnum considers MTAP as a third-party verifier at this present time. Ms. Varnum is not sure how other states would deal with the third-party verifier issue. Ms. Furr also attended this conference and expanded on what Ms. Varnum brought up about this issue by stating that Rolka was responsible for investigating, getting the money and paying for these relay services and how to identify where the call is coming from. Now Rolka has figured out that they can give states a better idea of how much money it will cost them to pay for these services. Mr. Bibler clarified that Rolka is the administrator for the iTRS fund. The NASRA organization has been asking Rolka where the calls originate from as they only know where the calls terminate because they are able to access that data from the providers. The contract between the FCC and Rolka only covers the termination of calls and Rolka needs an authority grant to collect the originating information and this is a contract modification that hasn’t happened yet. Mr. Bibler went on to add that there are two things that makes him think that the minutes will be given to the states, 1) collection of information, if that information is not collected, minutes won’t be paid and 2) a user registration database, which has not been implemented yet, although there is a video phone user registration database. Once that is set up for CapTel users and verifying that they are eligible for the equipment, those minutes more likely will be migrated to the states. Discussion ensued with further elaboration on this possibility of the states absorbing the cost of IPCTS.
Ms. Varnum mentioned that the MTAP website needs to be updated, but has not been resolved as of yet and there’s discussion about being a presence on social media such as Facebook. Other states have noticed an increase in internet traffic when they utilize Facebook in comparison to their state website. Ms. Varnum hopes to do this within the next year for MTAP.
Real-time text is an ongoing issue that was discussed at the conference and Hamilton Relay developed a video that explains what this entails. TTYs are becoming obsolete thus the interest in real-time texting. Mr. Bibler inquired whether MTAP is still tracking TTYs distributed and Ms. Varnum replied in the affirmative, for a five-year span, they are tracked. Ms. Varnum explained that the agency is not required by law to track equipment older than five years and Mr. Marks mentioned that part of his job is to present to the legislature the programs that are in the division and the legislature is accustomed to getting a snapshot of each program so it’s not necessary to track equipment beyond five years. Discussion ensued about the time span of tracking equipment and mention was made that the iOS 10 upgrade has a TTY function that can be utilized on the mobile devices. Mr. Bibler stated that now that there is more talk of text to 911, this TTY function will enable deaf people in Montana to call 911 with this method if they live in a county that does not have text to 911 as 911 centers are required to have TTYs. Ms. Varnum added that state agencies have TTYs as well so this enables deaf people to be able to call via the TTY function on their mobile devices. Education is needed to let deaf people know about this function on their phones as many are unaware of this. A question was posed as to whether the FCC will pay for this, and clarification was made that if it’s TTY to TTY, no charge, but if they use the relay service at some point in the transaction of the call, yes.
Ms. Varnum discussed the FCC waiver that will affect the contract (RFP) by reporting that there is a two-year temporary waiver that was granted to Sprint and Hamilton Relay with two requirements for the traditional relay services, speech to speech and captioned telephone service. This mainly relates with TRS and CapTel users and it’s for correctional facilities and for pay phones. An example is if a caller is using a specific provider, Hamilton Relay has to find the appropriate code for that phone provider to bill it. This is becoming difficult as long distance is going away and customers get their bill bundled. AT&T has no operators but still provides long distance to relay users and Sprint notified Hamilton Relay that they plan to stop all operator services so if a customer uses Sprint, Hamilton Relay cannot bill Sprint. Prisons require collect calls so billing options need to be available similar to pay phones. Hamilton Relay has to figure out how to collect on these types of calls. They are negotiating with the National Directory Service but the NDS is fairly expensive for the consumer. This will affect the RFP (request for proposal) for MTAP. No decision has been officially made yet. An attorney will be consulted on this.
Ms. Varnum also reported that while at the TEDPA conference, she became aware of a provider called RAZ Mobility. RAZ offers Androids which could be an option for MTAP clients since the agency currently only distributes iOS devices. MTAP will look into this provider further. Ms. Varnum stated that the next NASRA/TEDPA conference will be in Golden, Colorado for 2017.
Discussion ensued about where to have the committee meet in May as traditionally that’s for out of Helena, suggestions of location were made, such as MonTECH in Missoula, Lewistown, a Native American reservation, Glasgow and Wolf Point. One person commented on trying to combine the meeting with a tech fair that might be happening in the area that is chosen. This decision will need to be made at the February meeting so plans can be finalized for the May meeting location.
Hamilton Relay Report: Emilie Banasiak, Lisa Furr
Emilie Banasiak opened with giving an award for leadership in the deaf community to Shawn Tulloch. Lisa Furr asked if anyone had questions about the PowerPoint presentation/handout of the call traffic report provided by Hamilton Relay. No questions at this time so Ms. Banasiak began by reporting on two events that she attended for Hamilton Relay. One was the Brain Injury Alliance of Montana, and the conference was in Missoula. Ms. Whittaker joined her at the display table. There was quite some interest in the telephones and equipment that was displayed so this event might be something Hamilton Relay can attend again in the future. The second event was the My Transition conference in Helena. Ms. Varnum and Ms. Gault was also there for MTAP and interest was high also for the equipment and iOS devices. Ms. Furr added that Ms. Banasiak has met the goal established in the contract that Hamilton Relay has with MTAP to attend six outreach events. Ms. Banasiak mentioned that scholarship nominations will be open again. Hamilton Relay provides a $500 scholarship for a deserving high school student who is a senior with either a hearing loss or a speech difficulty who plans to attend college or vocational training.
Lisa Furr expanded on Ms. Varnum’s comments earlier in the day about real time text and showed Hamilton Relay’s video on this issue. The explanation is that there is a lag time because of calls going through a gateway if someone calls the relay service via phone or text, since a tower has to connect the two. With RTT it’s real-time typing, and the lag time is taken away. One doesn’t have to wait for the other individual to finish typing, the individual can type along and interrupt. RTT can be used to connect with a TTY as well. The TTY is phasing out and people are transitioning to a digital line and the TTY will not work on a digital line. If a person has the RTT application, the caller has more choices, whether to text or RTT.
Budget Report: Karie Whitlock
Karie Whitlock informed the committee that the budget remains at $775,000 and this will end on June 30, 2017. This amount is the restricted appropriation for the FCC mandate. The balance in the bank is in excess of $3 million for MTAP and the program receives more funding than what the program spends.
Indirect costs -- $19,828 (nonbudgeted appropriation, used up cash, doesn’t affect HB 2)
Prior year expense -$4,222 (end of state fiscal year, expenses based on what has been ordered and needs to be billed)
House Bill 2 expenditures (personal services and operating expenses) -- $63,362 for personal services (24.7%), $140,690 for operating expenses (21.1%). =
------
Total $204,052 of the House Bill 2 appropriation
Personal services costs for October 31 to November 17th have not been recorded. The Hamilton Relay invoices was not received or recorded for the month of October at the time of this report. But the Hamilton Relay bill has been paid as of this meeting.
Projection of personal services for state fiscal year 2017 is at $246,519. Operating expenses are expected to be what’s projected or slightly below. Equipment ordered through Teltex is starting to go up a little bit. Revenue as of October 31, 2016 is at $685,831.
Discussion ensued about the impact of opening the Missoula office and Ms. Whitlock said it’s hard to determine as Ms. Whittaker is out on maternity leave but she believes it will contribute to operating expenses being at or below projection numbers.
iTRS & DAC report: Ron Bibler
Ron Bibler informed the committee of two things:
On the iTRS side, providers are a little concerned that costs keep going up and the providers who only do in-state phone calls and prepaid phone cards, think it’s unfair that 100% of the revenue comes from prepaid phone calls to Mexico and South America and these smaller providers still have to contribute a percentage of their revenue into the iTRS fund. These providers have asked the FCC to look into using intrastate revenue and equalizing the contributions.
On the DAC side (Disability Advisory Council for the FCC), which consists of 25 members, they have come up with four things that can help define what quality standards should be in place before reimbursing the phone calls. One example of this is a standard of what the maximum allowable delay time should be. The DAC has presented these items to the commission to review.
MTAP Equipment report: Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson brought some gadgets that he discovered at the TEDPA conference, one was called a Ditto and the other one was a Panasonic cordless phone. The Ditto is a signaler and it works in tandem with a smartphone. It can be either clipped on or worn like a bracelet. It alerts the wearer if their smartphone is ringing. It can also be set as a timer and an alarm clock to wake the consumer up. It’s basically an accessory and will work up to 75 feet away. MTAP will not be distributing this accessory – just mainly to show the committee.
The Panasonic cordless phone is a little weightier than the ones MTAP currently distributes and it has a speakerphone button on the base if a consumer wants to utilize this feature. One feature Mr. Johnson noted was that the phone has the ability to slow down the voice of the incoming call as it’s happening up to 20 percent. The answering machine feature can also be slowed down. Mr. Johnson thinks that’s a positive as it benefits the consumer as much as having amplification. Ms. Varnum mentioned that MTAP might buy some of these Panasonic phones to try on some clients and see how they work.
Mr. Johnson also added commentary about RAZ Mobility that Ms. Varnum brought up during her director’s report and he believes that this might be a great alternative for those clients that prefer an Android phone. He stated that this company has a Lucia phone that’s similar to the Jitterbug that MTAP distributes. Mr. Johnson also reported on an application named the Sesame that the RAZ company has for people with mobility issues. It works with the Google Nexus 5X phones and a person with a mobility issue can voice “Open Sesame” and activate the phone. He felt it was something to explore as a possibility for that community (mobility issues).
Mr. Johnson added that Motorola has a couple of smart phones, called the Moto Z and the Moto Z play and they can become speakerphones by adding an accessory to the bottom of the phone. He was impressed with the decibel level and clarity on these phones and thought it would benefit elderly people who might need that stereo sound and clarity with their hearing aids.