I have followed with interest the discussion surrounding the NAD’s request that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) take action to ensure VRS users the ability to use the full features of any videophone with any default VRS provider they may choose. The FCC previously had ordered VRS providers to make their videophones work with any VRS default provider, but required the devices to offer only “basic” functions – that is, the ability to make and receive calls. It didn’t require more advanced features call history and missed calls, video mail, ring alerts, etc.

The usual argument spurred by this debate is whether “de-featuring” a videophone is inappropriate because it’s anti-competitive, or whether it is instead an appropriate way to ensure recovery of R&D costs (which can be difficult to do when devices are given away). This is without doubt an important question, but it’s not the only issue that needs to be considered. There is a fundamental technical issue as well:

In order to provide features, certain pieces of hardware and software need to be leveraged. If all of that necessary hardware and software resides inside a videophone itself (or on the computer, in the case of a software VP), then from a technical perspective it should not be terribly difficult to offer such features regardless of which VRS provider with which one uses the VP to connect. On the other hand, certain features may depend on hardware or software that resides not in the device, but in a data center far away. In those cases, it may be very difficult – or even impossible – for all features to be enabled when the device is connecting with another VRS provider whose hardware and software infrastructure may be unable to support the feature (or at least unable to support the feature as implemented in somebody else’s design).

An example would be the “walkie talkie” feature on a Sprint-Nextel mobile phone. While the phone itself might be able to be reprogrammed to work on the Verizon Wireless network, the walkie talkie feature simply cannot be made to work on anyone else’s network because it depends on certain hardware and software infrastructure that resides entirely (and only) in Sprint-Nextel’s data centers and on its network.

Eventually technology seems always to adapt to new regulatory standards and environments. The same is probably true here. But, regulations typically are much easier to write than to implement, and they often have unintended consequences. Could it be the case that some of the most advanced videophone features might simply need to be abandoned by all providers because they cannot feasibly be made to work across disparate hardware and software systems? I don’t know. But I’d sure like to see a little more discussion about that, and perhaps a little less about the anti-competitive vs. R&D expense recovery argument – where nobody on one side is likely to convince anyone on the other side anyway. For more commentary, check out http://www.nextalk.com