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From: mcb@presto.ig.com (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: TDD Cost and Technology Issues
Message-ID: <8413@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 29 May 90 06:59:07 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 396, Message 12 of 12


Thanks to Ken Harrenstien and others who pointed out the rationale
behind call discounts for TDD users (i.e, that the limited bandwidth
of TDD calls requires that TDD users must make much longer calls
compared to voice users for the same amount of information exchanged).
This makes sense.

The obvious next question is, is there any hope in sight for changing
the TDD standard to something more, uh, *modern* than 45.5 or 48 baud
(this is Baudot code, right, not ASCII?)?  I understand that no
teletype-like exchange can realistically be expected to approach the
information content of a voice conversation, but are deaf people going
to be stuck with 45.5 baud forever?  I can't imagine that given
today's miniaturization of components and automated manufacturing
techniques, a device can't be built that will communicate at least 2
orders of magnitude faster at an order of magnitude less cost than
TDDs of the 1970s...

Is anybody working on this, from the standards side, or the technology
side?


Michael C. Berch  
mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!bionet!mcb