\”…For example, my customers can call the phone number listed on my website and reach a human operator (rather than just a recorded message) at any time of the day or night…\”…

In any competition, political games are afoot behind the scenes. Your question who gains from that? In the long run, I hope it is for both. VRS providers are working hard to increase subscribers (or is that steal from other VRS providers). There are many ways to do that. I would like to cite two major undertaking to do that:
1) The obvious one: create new features, improve the quality of service and products.
2) The not so obvious one, but lately a few of them are painfully obvious: Political games behind the scenes such as lobbying at the FCC, brown-nosing deaf leaders, vlogs/blogs, VRS Providers releasing horde of Spin Doctors who are deaf or hoh, signing up with state/national organizations, etc.
Power is in the collective thinking of a large group. If we deaf/hoh express ourselves strongly and repeatedly, VRS providers likel will listen and so will the FCC.
eyes open & thumbs up, Ed

Also one will find the political games are being invovled, too. So more power for them or us????

Bob

If any VRS provider(s) tell you that you can’t have their VP because you did not use their service(s), this is considered illegal. If u have proof, submit that to the FCC as they want to know about it. All VRS providers have already told FCC that they do not pressure VRS users “to use their service or lose the product/not receive upgrade/etc”.

Thanks for the tip on webcamera.

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

I guess the answer would be yes if STS can be accessed via Internet and subsidized by federal fund. It is what makes multi-vendor possible. The FCC has said in the past that in not too distant future, subsidization responsibility of Internet-enabled relay services will go to states. If the FCC does not include a requirement for multi-vendor criteria, I can promise you most states will choose ONE relay provider.

If competition increases quality of service, and all Americans are entitled to high quality telephone service, and that telephone service should not be diminished because of disability under Section 225; does that mean that the law requires that multiple vendors be available for Speech-to-Speech Nationwide?

-Bob

I do have Dlink VP, Sorenson VP-100 (Sorenson Company refused to replace new VP-200 vp since I have not made any VRS calls via Sorenson), OjO VP with video answering machine!, and webcam.

Let you know that CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor…I think) webcam may not work perfectly since it always focus your motion body and the viewers (VRS terps and ASL people) hard to catch your conversation via CMOS webcam. I strongly recommend you to use the CCD (charge-coupled device) webcam that it does not focus the body motion.

I have tried to purchase two different brand laptops with built-in CMOS webcam. Both of them does not work very well with any VRS. One of them actually worked with HOVRS via WiFi. I had successfully returned both to stores for full refund. (I recommend you not to test at home then return them for full refund but they may charge you 15% restocking fee. I am not goanna to share you my business secrets.)

I already purchased another new brand laptop with webcam with CDD from i711 VRS. It works perfectly via WiFi from the public library.

It would be nice to welcome hot sexy HawkVRS terps coming to my home. However, I am not qualified for being blind….

First – Every vendor must invest a lot of money in marketing to sell their services and attract customers. If the did not spend all that money on marketing, they could invest more money in better interpreters.

Second – If 20 different vendors have 20 different technologies, we have NO interoperability and we need 3 or 4 or 5 different devices just to ne able to call each other.

That’s my three cents…