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As we rapidly move forward with VoIP around the world, adoption rates are not uniform across all homes and businesses. For example, unreliable access to 911 and the requirement for constant power backup have been barriers for households with seniors, young children, or people with disabilities to upgrade to VoIP. However, these obstacles are gradually being removed through alternative arrangements such as E911 and portable generators.
Thus, households and businesses in dense or urban areas have already migrated to VoIP, while others still rely on landlines, although that number is steadily declining each year. However, it’s not just landlines that are falling by the wayside. Many other services and technologies that rely on the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) are also struggling to keep up with the conversion to IP networks.
TTY exemptions
One such technology is TTY, which is used by millions of people with speech and hearing disabilities. It was developed in the 1960s and allows communication by writing instead of speaking/listening. As long as both users have a TTY device, they can communicate by typing replies. Even if a user doesn’t have access to such a device, he or she can use TRS, in which an operator transcribes one person’s message and sends it to another user who has a TTY device. The other person can type a response that the operator reads aloud to enable two-way communication.
With the migration to IP networks, telephone carriers are unable to support TTY as it does not work reliably in a data environment. However, many providers are working on developing a replacement technology called RTT or real-time text to do the same thing but will work better on IP networks. However, RTT is not mature enough to completely replace TTY in one fell swoop. So, to allow carriers to move forward with replacing TTY with RTT, the FCC has granted exemptions to AT&T (and will do so to other carriers as well) that will exempt the carrier from complying with existing TTY regulations subject to certain conditions.
As long as AT&T regularly informs their customers of alternate means of contacting 911, since TTY will not work, they can go ahead with the RTT implementation. The exemption will be in effect until December 31, 2017 or until new regulations for RTT are approved. In effect, the waivers ensure that people with hearing/speech disabilities will continue to have some form of communication available during the transition to the new technology.