DISABLED USERS PROTECTION
in the Electronic Communications market
by the Italian NRA
Agcom Resolution n. 79/09/CSP
In 2009 the Italian NRA (AGCOM) approved some
rules to assure suitable quality of the customer
assistance services made available from the providers
of electronic communication services.
The targets of the resolution are fixed and mobile
telephony operators. The rules are going to be
extended to Pay-TV operators, whilst the small ISP
are, at moment, not involved.
The main objectives of the resolution
➨ To guarantee to the users the right to get a
suitable and satisfactory assistance
➨ To get a progressive improvement of the
quality of the service
To assure the usability of the service to the
disabled users (deaf people).
Rules foreseen for assistance of deaf customers
➨ Call centers should anyway guarantee the
access the inbound service from the deaf users,
by use of suitable relay service technologies
➨ Following relay services should be made
available:
a) Chat and SMS, providing real time answers
to the user request;
b) Fax and e-mail, providing postponed
answers (anyway to be provided within two
hours)
Fall-back solution for assistance of deaf customers
➨ Whenever either SMS or Fax or e-mail service is not
available, the contact with the deaf user should be
additionally guaranteed from the operator, by interfacing
call center with the so-called “bridge-service”
➨ The deaf user is connected to the brige-service by a special
terminal
➨ The bridge-service is provided either from the operator
itself or from some specialized association of deaf people.
In Italy association providing this service is the most
important one: the ENS (Ente Nazionale per la protezione e
l’assistenza dei Sordi)
Agcom Resolution n. 514/07/Cons
In 2007 AGCOM approved some innovative
rules for the protection of disabled users,
deaf and blind, which marked a breaking
point if compared to traditional settings.
Why the new rules broke with the past
The most important news is that all the
operators had to contribute for the
provisioning of specific services at better
conditions for deaf and blind people, and
this, therefore, outside the scope of
Universal Service.
Disabled users can choose among all the
new technologies
Agcom believed that only in this way
the "right of choice" for disabled users
could be effectively protected, to fulfill
their equality with other users.
The right of choice …
Particularly, deaf and blind users must
not be obliged to choose among the
services falling within the Universal
Service to obtain favourable economic
conditions.
… and the equality with the other users
In other words, deaf and blind users have
the right – as all the other users – to choose
between all market operators and among all
the available services (fixed, mobile,
Internet), to find those that fit the best
their communication needs.
The contribute of the Associations
The procedure for the approval of the new
rules was long and complex and it involved, in
addition to the operators, some of the
Associations representing disabled categories
concerned, who provided valuable information
on the practical difficulties that deaf and blind
users face in the use of communications
services.
The new rules for deaf users
Deaf users have difficulties using voice services,
so AGCOM provided
on fixed lines: exemption of payment of the fee of
the residential universal service;
on mobile lines: all operators must prepare each
year a specific offer for providing at least 50 free
sms per day, on net and off net, and the best prices
for all data services.
The new rules for blind users
Blind users have difficulties in connecting to the
Internet (for which they often use text-to-speech
systems, requiring long connection times), so all
operators, no matter what type of offer and speed
of navigation chosen by the blind users, must
recognise 90 free hours of Internet access per
month or 50% discount on Internet connection in
case of flat or semi-flat offers.
How to inform the users about the facilities
To make deaf and blind users aware of their
rights, AGCOM dediced that operators must
cooperate
with
their
representative
Associations to create forms of advertising of
concessions and general information adapted
to the needs of understanding of deaf and
blind users.
How to get the facilities
Moreover, to facilitate the exercise of these
rights for deaf and blind users, AGCOM
established that to obtain the favorable
conditions users only have to send a medical
certification with modules made available from
the operators.
The supervision on the new rules
Since the adoption of the new rules Agcom works
with the Associations that constantly report
application issues or violations of the rules, so
giving a valuable contribution to the effectiveness
of the protection.
***
In 2009, AGCOM obtained a prize by the Ente
nazionale sordi for the effective protection that
results from these rules.