Mark Rejhon

Hi,

I was wondering if CapTel will work in Canada.

Even if I have to pay long distance for local calls -- it would be worthwhile for me to pay this premium when I am doing business with clients.

If you are a CapTel beta tester, please let Ultratec know that there are some deaf Canadians willing to pay long distance (perhaps on a USA calling card) just for making local calls (because I am in Canada). And to make sure that CapTel supports calling cards, so that this becomes possible.

I really look forward to 200 word-per-minute relay service!! (The fastest CapTel operator goes that fast!!) This is as fast as live closed captioning on the CNN television channel!!

Thanks,
Mark Rejhon
http://www.marky.com

Deafness

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Dennis

Mark, from my communications with CapTel, Inc, there will not be any opportunity to make calls outside of U.S. until your state is out of CapTel trials. Once the trials are over, then you can use it to call anywhere in the world.

You can't pay for it right now because of their trial contracts state it has to be completely free to the end user for the duration of the trial -- you can't pay for it, even if you wanted to.

rushabh

That is true for direct connection. However you can still make international phone calls through a calling card that provides a 1-800 number from which you can dial to anywhere in the world. Through CapTel, I have used many calling cards to call my significant other in India when she was visiting her parents.

Dennis

How does that work? To my knowledge, CapTel has no contract provision to bill anyone other than state governments at this time. "Direct connecting" is actually shadow dialing through CapTel, which is an 608 area code. All calls originate from the CapTel cente, not from you, AT THIS TIME. Maybe I ought to ask Ultratec customer service, it WOULD be mighty nice to call Canada once in a while.

Maybe it's a state thing? What state are you trialing in?

Dennis

Ah: It's a workaround. Nifty, though technically in violation of the CapTel usage agreement you must have signed to enter the trial. Neat, though!

rushabh

Not sure how it is in violation of the usage agreement? All I am doing is dialing a 1-800 number for my pre-paid calling card and from that number, I make international long distance calls. There is no charge to CapTel since it is an 1-800 number to which I'm dialing.

Mark Rejhon

I live in Canada.

Elle

Im sooooo frustrated that Canada is behind the times and the companies are not working harder to get more services in Canada to make it more accessible particularly for the Oral Hard of Hearing. I live in British Columbia and I am dying to have Captel in Canada and have contaced relay companies (ie: Telus) with no response from them. I absolutely hate using TTY's. Another thing Id like to rant about is the lack of a simple modification that phone companies could make to text cell phones where it enables the user to use the qwerty keyboard on the cell phone AS a tty or to even recognize tones from relay companies in order to make a VCO call but yet, read it on the cell phone screen. How hard can this be because I refuse to carry around a dumb portable TTY with me everywhere I go!!! If ANYONE hears about any cell phone coming out in the future that can act as a TTY, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!!


idelleb@hotmail.com

Mark Rejhon

That's why I developed my own wireless relay server using Linux and a TDD/TTY modem. It allows my BlackBerry to double as a TTY and be able to make calls to any phone numbers in the world (UK, Austrailia, USA, Canada) without limitations. The TTY modem connects to Bell Canada Relay service but also works with Telus Relay too. I still have to pay the long distance, however I am able to make the phone calls wirelessly. My software is actually faster than MCI's Wireless IP-Relay. You need some programming skill to pull this off.

Ever since the online relays no longer allow making calls to Canada phone numbers from the online sites, I've been using my BlackBerry the most often as my TTY. No need for me to carry around my TTY anymore!

Also, one way to get CapTel in Canada is to get a VoIP telephone number where your USA relatives lives, and then bring the VoIP adaptor back to Canada, which means you've got a USA area code located in Canada. That's the only way to get CapTel in Canada and this technique is only for highly skilled people. I would recommend Vonage at http://www.vonage.com ... and you need a really high-quality high speed Internet connection. I have not tried this, but I do TTY over VoIP and it works if you have a high quality Internet connection.