1. Introduction
1.1 Background
The Ministry of Economic Development engaged Consultel Associates Limited to assist in the development of the Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) service description.
The services and functions in this service description reflect:
- the requirements outlined in the Cabinet Committee paper entitled, Access to Telecommunications Systems for People with Disabilities (2002)1;
- input and comment from other government agencies;
- input and comment from a Disability Sector Reference Group and organisations representing the Disability Sector;
- input and comment from the disability community provided at public meetings held 29 September to 2 October; and
- input and comment from the Telecommunications Carriers Forum and other liable persons.
1.2 This Document
This document describes the services and functions that a Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) will need to make available or support in order to meet the telephone communication needs of Deaf2, hearing impaired and speech impaired members of the disability community funded by means of a Telecommunications Service Obligation (TSO) declared under the provisions of the Telecommunications Act 2001. These functions include publicity, TRS user guides, user training, service quality monitoring, performance monitoring and reporting. Other associated documents describe other matters such as tender documentation, commercial arrangements, and textphone functionality.
1.3 Interpretation and Definitions
Unless otherwise stated, terms used in this document should be interpreted as described below or as defined in the Telecommunications Service Obligations (TSO) Deed for Local Residential Telephone Service (2001).
Specific definitions are:
- relay service: A telecommunications service that enables users of different modes of communication to interact by providing conversion between the modes of communication. A human operator normally provides this conversion.
- text relay service: A telecommunications service that enables text telephone users and voice telephone users to interact by providing conversion between the two modes of communication. A human operator normally provides this conversion.
- text telephone: A terminal offering text telephony functions, as a stand-alone unit, as an addition to a voice telephone, or as an application in a multi-function computer based terminal.
- text telephony: A telecommunications facility offering real-time text conversation through telecommunication networks. Text telephony may be combined with voice telephony.
These definitions are adopted from the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI-TR 333, 1998, p.8).
1.4 Technical Background
ETSI-TR 333 (p.5) describes the general requirement for the TRS:
Voice telephony has become an important means of communication that holds our society together. But it cannot be used directly by everybody. For people with disabilities in speech or hearing, other communication services must be provided. One important such service is text telephony. It offers text conversation in real time through telecommunication networks. It is combinable in various ways with voice telephony.
Further, it goes on to:
- note that there is no currently available text telephone method that provides enough functionality to suit as a global standard. (p.5)
- consider various alternative technologies including fax, email, internet chat, short message service and audio visual systems before concluding that "no single service can currently replace text telephony as that needed for real time text conversation" (pp 14-16).
Technologies including speech recognition and speech to text conversion are developing and may in the future be able to provide relay services. This capability is not considered to be feasible today.
The TRS services specified in this service description address the needs of Deaf, hearing impaired and speech impaired people for real time conversation via the telephone network.
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