FCC Certifies First IP Captioned Telephone Service Using Only Automatic Speech Recognition

The Federal Communications Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau granted conditional certification to MachineGenius to provide Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS) using only automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. This is the first such grant and provides an opportunity for advanced technology to meet the FCC’s high reliability standards in providing captioned telephone service for deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans. Conditional certification permits MachineGenius to receive Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) Fund compensation pending verification that its service to registered users meets or exceeds the FCC’s minimum TRS standards.

MachineGenius will be using an app that can be installed on existing mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets that are Wi-Fi or mobile-data enabled. By delivering ASR-generated captions on an over-the-top smartphone app, MachineGenius says it is able to reduce the cost and increase the speed of delivery of telephone captions, while providing a degree of accuracy comparable to captioning provided by communications assistants.