4G and the upcoming era of tiered pricing for data usage and how it could impact Deaf people

In my previous blog article on "Why some deaf people don't like using the video phone" I discussed how people's own preferences will determine how valuable a product or service is in the communication technology sector even when others deem it as worthless. It's like this wise saying,"One man's junk, another man's treasure." Which is why there is a huge ongoing growth of apps and services for smartphones in the age of rapidly improving telecommunication infrastructure that will increasingly handle faster and larger data loads such as video streaming as we ease into the 4G era that will easily surpass the 3G network system on speed and data load that most smartphones currently route through. Perhaps this "all you can eat buffet" will not last much longer and the amount of data used will determine the price you will have to pay, a tiered pricing data plan for smartphone users.

In other words, video streaming will eventually be limited in terms of how much people are willing to pay on the amount of video data you want. And we all know that video streaming or downloads can eat huge amount of megabytes of data every month. This could easily impact the wallets of Deaf people soon enough who recently got excited with the recent news of iPhone smartphone video capability (see video demo here) for its signing communication potential.

According to Nielsen Company a typical smartphone user consumes about 300MB of data a month which is more than doubled compared to last year's figure. And with the coming advent of video streaming of all types (Hulu, video relay, Mobisode, YouTube, Facetime, Fring, etc) with the effort to include captioning in all videos.

For Video Relay Service (VRS) for deaf people through Apple's iPhone Facetime it could add even more video streaming data to your bill until it reaches a cap, say, 2 gb. That cap could come quickly before the end of the month along with your watching captioned television shows ("mobisodes"), movies (e.g. Hulu, Netflix) and the recent on-demand captioning attempt of YouTube videos making it increasingly attractive for Deaf smartphone users to access streaming videos. But would VRS through smartphones eventually put Deaf people at a financial disadvantage because such a service could easily push over a download cap of 2 gb a month, for example, when combined with other video downloads? Although there is no doubt that Apple's Facetime through VRS there have obvious advantages for hearing, hard of hearing, deaf and Deaf people when it comes to communicating with other people.

"Having FaceTime on iPhone 4 is a huge thing in the deaf community, because its the very first time any deaf individual can make a phone call to another deaf individual on their phones," she wrote in an email. "Before, we only could communicate with each other using email, text or IM."

It's been a long desired hope to be able to use the phone and be able to communicate freely and fluidly like everybody else. Not only just the visual aspect of signing but soon through Real Time Texting (RTT) over the smartphone without the need to hit the "send" button everytime you want to respond whether it's voice, visual signing or RTT. That exactly what your phone should do for you - unencumbered, unimpeded, and without waiting.

People will soon have their own communication preferences in choosing between using voice, real time video for signing or speaking, or Real Time Texting (RTT) where UbiVia would satisfy the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 requirements on texting.

The "21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009" (H.R. 3101) plans to modernize disability standards by making such accessibility features as closed captioning, video description and real-time texting a standard for Internet technologies.

Although the H.R. 3101 bill is good overall except for the fact that it'd be impossible for Assistive Technology (AT) companies to conform to the language requirement in the bill that all AT companies must include an "all in one" functionality with their devices. The language of the bill need to change and clarified as to not impose undue burden to AT companies on technology innovation.

Shapiro agreed on the value of a centralized database of all products and services for disabled Americans. He explained CEA’s concern that H.R. 3101, by requiring all Internet connected products and services be accessible by Americans with all disabilities, would freeze technology and deter innovation and entrepreneurs. Shapiro suggested several alternatives to the end goal of providing Americans access to information, education and entertainment. “The legislation before us – H.R. 3101 – is extremely broad in its scope; chilling innovation and the entry of new products. More, it ignores the increasing number of products on the market which serve the needs of many in the disability community.”

Shapiro noted that the current legislation does not take into account the ever changing dynamic of Internet-based services and devices. “We are no longer living in a world of single function devices…The legislation’s attempt to adapt old regulations established to apply to primary function services and devices …to new multi-function devices will not produce the desired result, and will only impede the advancement of new technologies and accessible features.”

Rather we should allow technology be the innovator and creator of voluntary standards much like what Research in Motion (maker of BlackBerry smartphones) has been doing by incorporating their philosophy on increasing accessibility for smartphone users. A philosophy and guideline on addressing people who are either deaf, hard of hearing, color blind, blind, speech impairment, motor impairment, visual impairment, or people with cognitive or learning disabilities. In this case, ignoring some 30 million people in the United States with hearing loss as potential smartphone users is not good marketing sense. But there seems to be an unseen caveat here with the increasing smartphone's video capability where Deaf people could unwittingly find themselves paying more than the average hearing person simply because of the VRS availability for smartphone users in the very near future. Have the telecommunication carriers even thought of this potential problem and avoid discriminating against those who require the use of VRS through smartphones when the days of "unlimited data" download comes to a screeching halt? Tiered pricing is coming. And a potential wallet buster for Deaf smartphone users.