Tennessee Awards Hamilton Relay Telephone Captioning Contract

The Tennessee Regulatory Authority has awarded Hamilton Relay the contract providing Captioned Telephone Services for the State of Tennessee. The new contract ensures that Hamilton, a telecommunications relay and captioned telephone service provider, continues to make it possible for individuals with hearing loss to communicate over the telephone.

Captioned Telephone (CapTel) Service allows individuals with difficulty hearing on the telephone to view word-for-word captions of what's said to them on the display screens of their CapTel phones. Behind the scenes, captioning assistants re-voice everything said by standard phone users into voice recognition software. The speech is then converted almost simultaneously into text that appears on the CapTel phone. Captions are available in English or Spanish.

"Captioned Telephone Service is essential for the thousands of individuals in Tennessee who are hard of hearing or late-deafened and for their friends and family who rely on the service to communicate over the telephone," said Monique Brazelton, contract administrator for Tennessee CapTel, in a statement. "Hamilton Relay's track record of providing high-quality call processing and outreach services in Tennessee over the past five years was an important factor in the selection."

Hamilton has provided extensive outreach across the state since 2010 when the company was first awarded the contract for Tennessee Captioned Telephone.

"Hamilton is very pleased to have the opportunity to continue providing Captioned Telephone services for the State of Tennessee," said Dixie Ziegler, vice president of Hamilton Relay, in a statement. "We are grateful for the support we have received from the state and its residents, and we remain committed to giving them the professional service they've come to expect from Hamilton Relay."

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