Nearly five years ago, I wrote, “I’m still a CapTel wannabee.” That was when the 32 states in the U.S. that had already approved the captioned telephone service did not yet include my home state of Massachusetts. Today I’m happy to say the wait is over. Starting on August 1, Hamilton Telecommunications will start providing its Hamilton CapTel service to residents of Massachusetts.
The CapTel captioned telephone service provides real-time captions of telephone conversations displayed on your phone. Users conference in a relay-service operator to provide a computer-aided transcription, which appears on an LCD display on their phones.
Why the long wait in Massachusetts? Politics, as usual. Enabling legislation was required to pave the way for the service, and our state legislature was slow off the mark. (Maybe that’s one of the reasons Massachusetts’ famed “Route 128 Technology Corridor” is a shadow of its former self these days.) The good news though is that I’ve been able to use another CapTel service for a while now, ever since the WebCapTel service went online. With WebCaptel, you don’t need a special phone but use your Internet connection instead to display the captions, and it works well. You can use it with your desktop or portable computer, or even with your iPhone. Web CapTel is available from Sprint WebCapTel as well as from Hamilton WebCapTel.
But even though I’m happy with the WebCapTel service, I’m sorely tempted to buy the CapTel phone manufactured by Ultratec and sign up for the service. It looks like a slick product that would be fun to use. In any case, being able to “see what they say” is the best way to avoid all those costly errors you must endure when a poor phone connection or a bad hearing day makes it impossible to get through a normal phone call.
Bill Richardson says
I have CapTel. How do I save the conversation to my computer as an audio and as a written document?
David Copithorne says
Great catch, Dennis, and I’m sorry I let the Sprint 800i announcement slip past me when it came out last year. I just went to the Sprint site and see I can get the 800i for $99 — a slick product and a good deal. Thanks for the comment!
Dennis says
Well, David, you still can get a CapTel phone in Massachusetts even without having to wait until August 1st. The CapTel 800i phone has been available for about a year now, and only requires one telephone line instead of two. The 800i phones are a nice way to get CapTel when you’re not able to leave the computer on all the time. Have you seen the CapTel 800i phone at sprint800.com? (full disclosure – I think I was the one giving a presentation 5 years ago at Northeastern….)