Sprint Relay Services Contract Extended from State of Wisconsin

The State of Wisconsin has selected Sprint S to continue providing assistive communications services to individuals in the State who are deaf, have hearing loss or a speech disability for another three years plus two one-year renewals. Sprint, one of the leading providers of Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS), has provided relay services in Wisconsin since 2009. “Sprint has clearly demonstrated its ability to meet the State's expectations in providing relay service for deaf and hard-of-hearing Wisconsin citizens, as well as for individual Wisconsinites with speech disabilities,” said Jack R. Cassell, WTRS Contract Administrator, DOA/DET. “We are looking forward to continuing our excellent working relationship with Sprint.” Sprint's Relay service in Wisconsin allows hearing callers and users of text-telephone (TTY), CapTel and Speech-to-Speech (STS) to communicate with one another through trained Relay Operators, particularly when the hearing party does not have specialized telecommunications equipment. Sprint National Traditional Relay Service allows relay users who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind, or speech-disabled to use a TTY to type his/her conversation to the Relay Operator. The Relay Operator then reads the typed conversation to a hearing person. The Relay Operator relays the hearing person's spoken words by typing them back to the TTY user. Speech-to-Speech (STS) provides a communication assistant (CA) for people with difficulty being understood by the public on the telephone. STS allows speech-disabled persons to voice their conversation. A specially trained Relay Operator repeats the words of the person with a speech disability or synthesizer output to the other party. No special equipment is needed to use this service. With Sprint's Captioned Telephone Service, captions appear virtually at the same time as the person speaks, allowing callers to enjoy the natural flow of an interactive telephone conversation. Wisconsin residents with hearing loss may qualify to receive a voucher toward the purchase price of a CapTel phone through the Wisconsin Telecommunications Equipment Purchase Program (TEPP). “We are pleased that the State of Wisconsin has once again selected Sprint to be its relay service provider,” said Mike Ellis, National Director for Sprint Relay. “It is a great vote of confidence for the type of Relay service we're committed to providing.” Sprint has served as the nation's largest 711 TRS provider for the past 23 years and currently provides relay services in 35 states and exclusively for the federal government, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For more information on Wisconsin's Relay Service, call 1-800-676-3777.