Real Time Text (RTT) Service

There are an estimated 9 million deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired people in the UK. Approximately 1% of any national population will have a profound speech or hearing disability that prevents the routine use of voice telephony.

SMS, email and instant messaging would seem to be ideal alternatives, but none of those methods provide benefits similar to a real-time voice connection. That means, across the globe, there has remained a fundamental barrier to the way that deaf and speech-impaired people would like to communicate with each other, and with hearing people; an equivalent to voice.

Benefits of Real-Time Text

The RTT Service provides some of the unique characteristics of a voice call, in text form;

• The connection is dialed (rather than store-and-forward)
• Information flows in real-time, character by character
• Participants can 'barge in' or interject

Together, that means that conversation can be more natural, significantly faster, and more productive. For deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired people it can make a tremendous positive difference to the way that they communicate on a daily basis.

Subscribers pay a fixed amount per month for mobile and internet access, in addition to or bundled with a device and data contract. The potential for attracting subscribers, with a likelihood of device upgrade and long-term contract, is tremendous.