WASHINGTON-A coalition of hearing-impaired organizations, led by a start-up pocket telephone firm aligned with AT&T Corp., has asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate hearing-aid interference from a European-based digital wireless technology deployed throughout the world and headed for the United States.
The group said 4 million Americans with hearing aids may not be able to use next-generation pocket phones driven by GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) technology or even be around people who operate them because of an irritating buzzing sound such phones can cause in hearing aids.
“As we continue to speed down the information highway we need to make sure that we don’t have a head-on collision with a technology that may prove to be physically hazardous and economically devastating to millions of Americans,” said James Valentine, head of Hear-IT Now and president of North American Wireless Inc.
Self Help for the Hard of Hearing and the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf were recruited by Valentine to draw attention to the issue, but the topic has been on their radar screens for some time.
In its June 5 petition, the group included studies from Denmark, New Zealand, Australia and England that found GSM digital pocket phones can cause interference to hearing aids. But mobile telephones tested overseas operate at higher power levels and on lower frequencies than will phones on 2 GHz PCS systems in the United States.
Guy Vander Jagt, a former House Republican leader who is with a Washington, D.C., law firm, has been lobbying Congress on behalf of Hear-IT Now.
Today, most of the 25 million cellular phones in use incorporate analog technology and do not disrupt hearing aids. But cellular systems are expected to increasingly convert to digital technology in coming years. In addition, more than 2,000 personal communications services networks expected to be built during the next few years will employ digital technology.
Congress in 1988 mandated that telephones be hearing aid-compatible, but exempted wireless communicators from that requirement. Hear-IT Now argues the law should apply to all telephones. FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, responding to a query from Senate communications subcommittee Chairman Bob Packwood, R-Ore., said recently he does not believe GSM technology poses a serious risk to hearing aids but promised to look into wireless hearing aid-compatibility in an upcoming rulemaking.
Major wireless trade associations have distanced themselves from Valentine, questioning his tactics and motives.
“Attacking the GSM technology can only stimulate unnecessary concern among the uninformed, including those who you purport to seek to help,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. CTIA is helping underwrite electromagnetic compatibility research at the University of Oklahoma. A conference on the interplay between wireless phones and hearing-aids was held earlier this month in Dallas. Wheeler questioned why Valentine was not registered for the conference.
Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association, said “interference is not an issue unique to any one technology or service.”
Wheeler’s strong criticism of Valentine represents a significant policy shift on the issue. Earlier this year, after attacks on GSM technology first surfaced, CTIA and PCIA kept a low profile and remained neutral in light of their representation of rival wireless manufacturers and reluctance about drawing attention to what might become characterized in the news media as a health and safety problem.
Wireless industry leaders, with backing from Congress and federal regulators, have approached disruptions from wireless phones to hearing aids, cardiac pacemakers and other electronic medical devices as an interference management issue and assert such problems can be resolved in the private sector.
Improving shielding of electronic medical devices is seen as one option, though those who use such devices or make them may not want to alone bear the cost of retrofiting equipment or manufacturing new products. Another idea is including an advisory or warning in brochures accompanying newly purchased pocket phones.
Valentine heads North American Wireless, a Vienna, Va.-based company that has contracted with AT&T to build PCS systems licensed to women, minorities, small businesses and rural telephone companies using Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology.
Though CDMA is considered by some superior to GSM (a form of Time Division Multiple Access technology), CDMA equipment licensed by Qualcomm Inc.-a leading U.S. supplier headquartered in San Diego-will not be commercially available until late this year or early 1996.
GSM equipment, in contrast, can be bought today.
As such, Valentine has invited questions about whether his efforts on behalf of hearing-aid wearers are designed to buy time for CDMA and discredit GSM along the way. He insists his interest in the GSM hearing-aid interference issue is driven by a desire to see the PCS industry succeed, regardless of technology.
