Although there are plenty of negative news announcement in the Sprint camp, the positives from Sprint have been greatly overlooked recently. We will be the first to admit that we have not provided much if any pro-Sprint news recently, but this is all about to change. The first positive Sprint news we have to report is that Sprint was recently honored for the 2008 Mobility Awards for Business Solutions Carrier Leadership, Sprint Navigation. Sprint Navigation is a solid product, but availability on the handsets we like from Sprint is another story unless of course you have loaded the newest unofficial ROM update to your HTC Mogul.
In other Sprint news, Sprint announced the WebCapTel Web-Based Service for those of us that are hearing impaired. In our experiences, the best device for hearing impaired individuals is actually the Sidekick which allows IPrelay to allow conversations to be completed by a third party who converts voice to text and vice versa in order for a fluid conversation to take place. Sprint had decided to release a Web-Based Service that allows a person who can speak but has challenges hearing over the phone, to read word-for-word captions of their calls on a web browser. The downside to the service is that it requires a web browser in order to read the conversation, but we can all appreciate the availability of a service dedicated to the nearly 23 million hearing impaired. Here is the official statement from Sprint:
With Sprint WebCapTel(R), users can make and receive calls on their own telephone, cell phone, land-line, or even an amplified phone. During the call, if they have difficulty hearing what is being said, they can log into www.sprintcaptel.com and read written captions of everything their caller speaks. Captions appear virtually at the same time as the person speaks, allowing users to enjoy a natural telephone conversation.
The only problems we currently see with this implementation are that a web browser is required in order to read the conversations and currently EVDO Rev 0 and EVDO Rev A lack the capabilities to have simultaneous data and voice activity. The alternative would be to use a handset that had WiFi capability and hope that you were in a WiFi network so that you could continue with the call while being able to type or speak back into the phone.