The Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) has amended its rules to allow phone companies to replace support for an outdated form of text telephone communications (TTY) with support for real-time text (RTT). The Commission has already granted various wireless carriers’ waiver requests of the Commission’s requirements to support TTY technology as they committed to developing and deploying real-time text services on their wireless IP networks. Under the new rules, RTT services must be both compatible with existing TTY services and interoperable with real-time text applications on other networks. The Commission also adopted a notice asking questions about next steps in the process of integrating these services into telecommunications relay services and the need for certain RTT features for people with cognitive disabilities and who are deaf-blind.
