FCC To Look at Eliminating TTY Machines in Favor of Real-Time Text
The FCC will take up at its April 28 meeting a rulemaking that looks at effectively ending text technology (TTY) in favor of real-time text (RTT). Making that change was a recent recommendation of the FCC Disability Advisory Committee (see 1602230066). AT&T, Cellular South and Verizon have all received temporary waivers to use RTT as a substitute for TTY (see 1512210045). FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is circulating the item Thursday for a vote at the meeting, agency officials said. Thursday night, the FCC's preliminary agenda listed the NPRM, as well as a special access order and NPRM, also as expected (see 1604070069).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
TTY machines are the cumbersome, typewriter-like devices that for decades, starting in the 1960s, were the only alternative for the deaf and hard of hearing to communicate on the phone. TTY machines have many drawbacks, an FCC official said Thursday. They transmit only 60 words per minute, require users to take turns speaking and have limited character sets, the official said. The biggest problem is that they were built for a circuit-switched world and in an IP world their reliability is questionable, the official said.
While only a small percentage of the deaf and hard of hearing still use TTYs, making the change nationwide would eliminate TTY “silos” and more fully integrate the deaf and hard of hearing into the mainstream communications world, the official said. RTT is different from standard texting in that both sides can see characters as they're entered into a device, the official said. The rulemaking would look at RTT on all devices, including computers, tablets and phones, so it also has a wireline component, the official said. At this point, there are no RTT-specific devices.
The FCC would ask a broad number of questions, said the official. The person said that those questions would include how the FCC should achieve the transition, to whom it would apply, when it should happen, whether a specific timeline would be required and what the rules should require for the small number of TTY users, including how long the rules must be backward-compatible.