Impact of Technology
The MED has studied the effect on the current TRS of the likely major shifts in technology.
1. Current Situation
Access to the TRS
Access to the New Zealand TRS today is by two means:
- The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) using 0800 numbers for national callers and (09) prefixed numbers for callers from overseas and from mobile phones.
- The Internet for users of Internet Relay.
The TRS Platform
The platform supports the latest textphone protocol approved by the ITU-T in 1994, V.18. This protocol allows inter-operability between the original Baudot-based textphones plus other standards in use in Europe. Nevertheless, the fact that the latest protocol advance in textphones was approved by the ITU-T in 1994 is an indicator that the underlying technology is well into its sunset phase.
The New Zealand TRS platform is a duplicated and fully integrated Voice over IP (VoIP) platform that presents PSTN or Internet originated calls to Relay Assistants in an identical manner. The Relay Assistant's headset plugs directly into their personal computer.
The New Zealand TRS platform is at the leading edge of today's technology. As the New Zealand PSTN migrates to an IP network at some point it will be necessary to change the interface to the TRS platform. However this change is not expected to be required within the initial term of the TRS TSO Deed.
2. Major Technology Shifts
Over the next 5 years the Telecom PSTN is expected to be replaced by an IP based digital network. This will remove many constraints imposed by legacy technology and national versions of analogue standards. This in turn will lead to a more global terminal market largely devoid of national variants, greater production volumes and lower costs.
Major technology improvements can be expected to benefit the communication needs of the disabled, initially through the affordable availability of broadband wireline and wireless services to support video communication by users of New Zealand Sign Language.
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a network technology standard for controlling calls using IP. It has been developed by the Internet Engineering Task force (IETF) with a good focus on how the communications needs of disabled people can be met while protecting the users from possible discrimination or prejudice.
Automation of text to sign language interpreting and text to lip speaking using avatars will be supported by SIP. This technology may reduce the need for relay services because the requisite intelligence and functionality will reside in the individual user terminals configured with knowledge of the user's disability or disabilities.
Text over IP may replace conventional textphones as this technology allows interruptions without the cumbersome "Go Ahead" procedure inherent in textphone use today.
Speech to text technology, as it advances, can benefit TRS enhancement on multiple levels. In the relatively short term, it is possible that rather than typing, the agents may be able to "re-voice" for the hearing person and be able to transcribe at rates much quicker than traditional typing. Long term, it is possible that this technology could listen to unknown voices and transcribe without an agent being completely dedicated to the call and performing more of a monitoring/QA role. Similarly, text to speech could be enabled to voice for the text user to the hearing person at some point.
CapTel™ is a voice recognition technology that automatically converts speech into text on the user's special telephone. Already available and popular in the USA, there are users in New Zealand who have become profoundly Deaf after learning English but retain their oral skills who would welcome this technology. The other main user group is the hearing impaired who have normal oral ability where progressive hearing loss can be countered by using CapTel. There is a large group of users older than 65 years who would benefit from this technology whereas they resist using textphones and voice carry over services available through the relay service.
Sprint has observed in the USA that even as technology marches forward, there are those who will continue to use legacy systems (TTYs etc) as long as possible because users are experienced and comfortable with such systems.
3. Crown Textphone Pool
As public telephone network technology is replaced from the current dial up based network to an IP based network by about 2012 the current range of textphones in the Crown pool will become obsolete. What will emerge in terms of IP textphone equivalents in the future is difficult to predict. However, trends indicate that Session Initiation Protocol will eventually be integrated into textphones and that they will have the dual capability to operate over both wireline and wireless networks with ease. This would overcome the major connectivity problem that exists today by virtue of textphones having a technological base from over 40 years ago.
Trends will need to be carefully monitored and equipment choices made in order to minimise the cost of equipment write-off to the Crown while meeting disabled people's communications needs.
The Deaf-Blind community wishes to see a device called Pac-Mate introduced to the textphone pool as the replacement for the Krown telebrailler that is no longer manufactured.
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