VRS Competition

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NCTelecom

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Merry Christmas,

I have recently become involved in the VRS industry and I am doing some holiday research.

I have two questions for anyone willing to share their insights.

First, Sorenson has approximately 75-80% of the VRS market, yet doesn't seem to have many fans here or elsewhere. If that is true, what are they doing so well that attracts users to their service despite wishing they could use someone else?

Second, what is most important to you as a user when choosing a service and what features, improvements would you like to see developed (for example, I have seen a Skype integration wish a few times)?

Thanks for the comments. Hopefully it can be used to improve your service in the future.
 
We are indirectly supporting VRS companies, not one ourselves. It is in our best interest to see healthy competition.

Do you have any links that I can learn the story? I am definitely ignorant on this space...that is why I am trying to learn.

VRS seems to be behind other niches on recent improvements in telecom technology. There appears to be opportunity to change that, thus the questions.
 
I'd love to be able to leave messages on the vp. What's the dang holdup???
 
Just letting ya know; I will tell you all this, but I have a price.

I just have no energy or incentive to spill the long winded history out when the information is pretty much readily available.
 
Beowulf said:
I'd love to be able to leave messages on the VP. What's the dang holdup???
Click to expand...

Just to clarify this here for beowolf- I am sure he meant we want to be able to leave messages point to point regardless of who is the VRS software/hardware provider. We can not simply get a answering machine to handle this and be able to work with any VRS's way of making calls.


NCTelecom said:
Merry Christmas,

I have recently become involved in the VRS industry and I am doing some holiday research.

I have two questions for anyone willing to share their insights.

First, Sorenson has approximately 75-80% of the VRS market, yet doesn't seem to have many fans here or elsewhere. If that is true, what are they doing so well that attracts users to their service despite wishing they could use someone else?

Second, what is most important to you as a user when choosing a service and what features, improvements would you like to see developed (for example, I have seen a Skype integration wish a few times)?

Thanks for the comments. Hopefully it can be used to improve your service in the future.
Click to expand...

As macfreak pointed out if you are starting a VRS I certainly hope not. I think there are too many!!!!


you asked about the dominating market by Sorenson, I am sure you noticed that by now it seems like they are using the WOW factor and dangle a bone in front of us of the possible future, but then only to say its too bad this is all we have for you to use. And we accepted this in a passive position. Do you want to know the saddest thing is? the largest company = Sorenson is confined to the USA only. What about our neighbors? Canada? Mexico? Overseas? Europe? We only limited to hearing to deaf calls across international borders. We can't make phone number calls to our deaf counterparts internationally. spare me the sermon with VRS funding and INTERNET complication ip address issues.

If you really want to know how to improve VRS industry, perhaps you could try tracing your own daily steps in the hearing world in the phone communication sense and see if you can replicate each step to accommodate the deaf way. I am sure you are going to run into alot of road blocks. Your cellphone is one of them. The deaf community cannot use their native ASL language to make efficient calls via tiny cell phones. We cannot leave phone message deaf to deaf. We are constricted to INTERNET connection only. We cannot use cell voice lines. We don't have our own 411 service. We don't have deaf white/yellow pages. We don't have an phone alerting system we can integrate to our alarm clock that will work with all VRS software/hardware.

This list is gonna go on and on and on. What I listed here only scratches the surface.
 
Radioman - thanks for the helpful replies. I will have some follow up questions once I can research a few things.
 
Not yet? It will never happen.

FCC only pays from the time one answers the VRS calls until the second that either of party hangs up. That is it, nothing else. Remember it is VRS calls that FCC pays, not point to point.

This have been like this way since 1993, where FCC pays for TTY relay calls, never paid point to point calls on TTY, same principle and will never change.

Beowulf said:
Not YET, anyway.
Click to expand...
 
qwerty123 said:
costs and not reimbursed by FCC if point to point calls
Click to expand...

Thats correct. but there GOT to be a way to "add on" something to the vps, or software to allow us to add our our hardware to save the recording of point to point calls without the expense passed on to the VRS providers other then one time R and R design change to allow this to happen.
 
I know the issue about inability to leave video messages point to point. But isn't that possible with a webcam? You record a message and send it in an email. Bypass the videophone altogether. VRS is a program to enable telecommunication between deaf and hearing through interpreters. So really, the P2P messages are not the goal of the VRS companies. Just my 2 cents.
 
Could someone help this newbie catch up on what these latest acronyms mean??

diehardbiker said:
Not yet? It will never happen.

FCC only pays from the time one answers the VRS calls until the second that either of party hangs up. That is it, nothing else. Remember it is VRS calls that FCC pays, not point to point.

This have been like this way since 1993, where FCC pays for TTY relay calls, never paid point to point calls on TTY, same principle and will never change.
Click to expand...
Please forgive my seemingly "dumb" questions. As I mentioned in my last post (which was in a different thread), I am not deaf but from time to time the vast number of Chronic Medical Issues that I deal with, and the even MORE VAST number of meds that I am on to treat these issues, there are times (not very often), but times nonetheless, where if I am going to have a prayer in this world of being understood by the person that I am calling, then using a relay service is really my only option!! I've been pretty fortunate to have not had one of these "flare-ups" (for lack of a better word) for the last 6 or 7 yrs so I'm DEFINITELY NOT UP TO DATE on the most recent technological advances or lingo in this field!!

If I'm understanding all of the acronyms correctly, VRS stands for Virtual Relay Service, right??

I'm not sure I am familar w/ what the difference btw VRS & Point-2-Point is?

Like I said, these probably will seem like "dumb questions" to those of you who eat breathe & sleep this stuff, but even so this "newbie" would TRULY APPRECIATE IT if you could help me get "back in the loop" since at least for the next couple of weeks I will probably have to use Relay more than a regular phone call, depending on which end of the "Yo-Yo" cycle that my health decides to be on at the instant that I need to make a phone call!!

Thanks again!!
~kmaoboe
 
kmaoboe said:
Please forgive my seemingly "dumb" questions. As I mentioned in my last post (which was in a different thread), I am not deaf but from time to time the vast number of Chronic Medical Issues that I deal with, and the even MORE VAST number of meds that I am on to treat these issues, there are times (not very often), but times nonetheless, where if I am going to have a prayer in this world of being understood by the person that I am calling, then using a relay service is really my only option!! I've been pretty fortunate to have not had one of these "flare-ups" (for lack of a better word) for the last 6 or 7 yrs so I'm DEFINITELY NOT UP TO DATE on the most recent technological advances or lingo in this field!!

If I'm understanding all of the acronyms correctly, VRS stands for Virtual Relay Service, right??

I'm not sure I am familar w/ what the difference btw VRS & Point-2-Point is?

Like I said, these probably will seem like "dumb questions" to those of you who eat breathe & sleep this stuff, but even so this "newbie" would TRULY APPRECIATE IT if you could help me get "back in the loop" since at least for the next couple of weeks I will probably have to use Relay more than a regular phone call, depending on which end of the "Yo-Yo" cycle that my health decides to be on at the instant that I need to make a phone call!!

Thanks again!!
~kmaoboe
Click to expand...

no such thing as dumb questions. they are only dumb when not asked.
vrs=video relay service. you were close:lol:

vrs calls are ones you use to contact a relay company to make calls between hearing and deaf/HOH. You can't see the caller on both ends of calling parties and uses a third person in middle to interpret calls from sign language to voice and vice veresa.

point to point calls are deaf video to deaf video with no relay service used in between. both connected callers can see each other directly in video and communicate via sign in video.
 
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