Subject: [Simple] The real time text thread

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2010 14:11:55 +0100

Hi all,
My name is Robert Hecht and I work for the authority the Swedish post and telecom agency, PTS.
We procure services for people with disabilities. Among other things we procure a relay services for text telephony and a relay service for video telephony (which includes text for short complementary things like names, phone numbers and other things that you would have to spell with sign language instead of signing the word.)
I will keep my comments and questions as short as possible:
A.
I understand that part of the discussions is regarding an alternative way of sending text in real time. It is the standard RFC 4103. It is a standard that is useful in a number of situations. It is also the standard that will secure interoperability globally for people with hearing disabilities using text. It will be clearly stated in the Technical specification (TS) that RFC 4103 is the way (as a shall requirement) to reach global interoperability. It is no risk for fragmentation with this new technical specification (TS) in place.
It is a risk for fragmentation without this TS, because in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Germany we already have national services available for the whole user group in the respective countries. These services use the solution that is being standardised in the TS. When services are set up without a reference to this standard it is a major risk that an interoperable standard will be forgotten. The argument, with all its limitations, could be that it is interoperable in the Nordic countries. With the TS in place it will be clearly stated that RFC 4103 shall be included for interoperability.
B.
When we procure a service it is important that it is companies on the market that offers the service. It creates a competing situation and the company that can meet the requirements to the lowest price will be offered to sign the contract. When we procured the video relay service last time it was no bids from companies offering RFC 4103. We have to have a service now. In the future we might see a large number of services based on RFC 4103, but in a number of countries relay services already offer real time text over IP with the TS solution today. The goal is to standardise a solution used to secure transparency. The TS is not creating something new. It is used and in a number of countries it is used by the national relay service.
A question to all listening to this in Simple: Do you know of any national relay services in Europe using RFC 4103 for real time text?
I mean services available for all with hearing impairments in a country and I mean a service with requirements on availability. With availability I mean for example that the service shall be available for 98 % of the open hours per month, or similar requirements.
I ask this as a procurer because we would be very interested in visiting these relay service. Please state the name of the organisation offering the relay services and if possible the person to contact and contact information. I am aware of the trial project Reach 112, but now I ask for launched national relay services only. It would be very helpful for me!
C.
It is true that it requires more overhead thjan the solution for RFC 4103. This is not a threat to RFC 4103. The service provider setting up a service must be aware of the overhead and the services are that. The services in the different countries works fine. The overhead is of no problem for the end users or companies that do not offer services or products based on the TS. You should only follow this to-be-standard if you set up your system with the correct dimentions. In fact the TS states that it sets no requirements on product vendors, software designers or operators that do not use the TS. The point is to set up the right dimentions.
A video conversation based on sign language anyway requirers much more band width than any text dialouge, so it is not any extreme loads.
An important point is that this is ONLY for people with disabilities and the people that they are in contact with. It will not grow into a new Skype or anything like that. It is an assistive way of communication for people that have hearing impairments or are death. It is for instance a national relay swervice in Germany and a lot of people live there. The service for hearing impaired people in Germany has a service with no problems due to the overhead. That is my understanding.
D.
The idea with the TS is to offer mainstream solutions. This can work in any mobile phone, any computer (Linux, Mac, pc). It is not hindered by any router that might be part of an ADSL offer from a operator. It works with the TS all the way to mobile telephones using GSM all the time and for mobile telephones that sometimes fall down to GSM when the 3G has poor coverage.
The TS offers text in a way that secures that each character reach the other end unchanged. It is based on TCP. It is possible that others prefer RFC 4103 and I hear that it is not so common with lost characters anymore. It is based on RTP. I know it is strong opinions about if RTP or TCP is the right way to send text character by character. That is not the point here. We secure interoperability with RFC 4103. Not everyone must use this TS. It is a free choice. It is a gap filler and the TS confirms that RFC 4103 is the way to reach interoperability.

Best regards,
Robert Hecht

Robert Hecht
Senior Officer

Swedish Post and Telecom Agency, PTS
Consumer Markets Department
Section for Consumer Issues
Phone: +46 8 678 57 15
Mobile: +46 730 66 57 15
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
www.pts.se<http://www.pts.se/>

---

From: Arnoud van Wijk <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:35:56 +0100

Hello Robert,

> I understand that part of the discussions is regarding an alternative 
> way of sending text in real time. It is the standard RFC 4103. It is a 
> standard that is useful in a number of situations. It is also the 
> standard that will secure interoperability globally for people with 
> hearing disabilities using text. It will be clearly stated in the 
> Technical specification (TS) that RFC 4103 is the way (as a shall 
> requirement) to reach global interoperability. It is no risk for 
> fragmentation with this new technical specification (TS) in place.
>
I am happy to see that PTS will support RFC4103 as the Interoperable 
standard.

> It is a risk for fragmentation without this TS, because in Sweden, 
> Norway, Denmark, Finland and Germany we already have national services 
> available for the whole user group in the respective countries. These 
> services use the solution that is being standardised in the TS. When 
> services are set up without a reference to this standard it is a major 
> risk that an interoperable standard will be forgotten. The argument, 
> with all its limitations, could be that it is interoperable in the 
> Nordic countries. With the TS in place it will be clearly stated that 
> RFC 4103 shall be included for interoperability.
>
Hmmmm, I think it is important that we all understand what is really 
going on and what is happening.
In the Netherlands, we will start a procurement for a relay service as 
well in 2011. And we indeed are getting information about the company 
who created the technology and operates the Relay Services in the Nordic 
countries and Germany. It is actually 1 manufacturer and all those 
relays use the same system.

Now, that 1 company is using a proprietary method with SIP MESSAGE to 
send text in real-time. So we are actually talking about a proprietary 
real-time text protocol that is being used if I understand Bruno's mail 
and the company information.

The Real-Time Text Taskforce has no issues with using proprietary and 
alternative forms of real-time text as long that such networks have at 
their border/interfacing with other networks interoperability with 
RFC4103. So that end to end real-time text is possible for RFC4103 users 
and vice versa.

But what I am understanding is that it looks like that a proprietary 
standard made by this company is being pushed at ETSI to make it a 
real-time text standard.
And this standard (SIP MESSAGE RTT) is supposed to solve problems that 
RFC4103 is supposed to have. We have already explained that the problems 
of RFC4103 are not occurring anymore.
And here at SIMPLE/IETF with many experts we have already advised 
against in using SIP MESSAGE for real-time text.

So, my question is: why not have the 1 company keep their proprietary 
real-time text system, and focus on RFC4103 for interconnection with 
their relay system. Because more and more users are using RFC4103 
real-time text and are now unable to use the Relay services in the above 
described countries! (even beter..have that company move to RFC4103 as 
native real-time text! It will only be good for all of us!)

> When we procure a service it is important that it is companies on the 
> market that offers the service. It creates a competing situation and 
> the company that can meet the requirements to the lowest price will be 
> offered to sign the contract. When we procured the video relay service 
> last time it was no bids from companies offering RFC 4103. We have to 
> have a service now. In the future we might see a large number of 
> services based on RFC 4103, but in a number of countries relay 
> services already offer real time text over IP with the TS solution 
> today. The goal is to standardise a solution used to secure 
> transparency. The TS is not creating something new. It is used and in 
> a number of countries it is used by the national relay service.
>
But IETF explained that the proposed method is not recommendable. You 
should have come to standardization first, so could this little mess 
have been avoided. And you should have specified an international 
standard in your procurement so that all users could benefit from the 
service. If RFC4103 was in the requirements, we would use RFC4103 end to 
end in the above described countries.
After all, RFC4103 is created with both the users who need real-time 
text as well the implementers/networks/systems in mind.

> A question to all listening to this in Simple: Do you know of any 
> national relay services in Europe using RFC 4103 for real time text?
>
> I mean services available for all with hearing impairments in a 
> country and I mean a service with requirements on availability. With 
> availability I mean for example that the service shall be available 
> for 98 % of the open hours per month, or similar requirements.
>
> I ask this as a procurer because we would be very interested in 
> visiting these relay service. Please state the name of the 
> organisation offering the relay services and if possible the person to 
> contact and contact information. I am aware of the trial project Reach 
> 112, but now I ask for launched national relay services only. It would 
> be very helpful for me!
>
Well the Real-Time Text Taskforce can help here. There are indeed relays 
that use Total Conversation. Let's take that part offline and we will 
gladly help you.

> It is true that it requires more overhead thjan the solution for RFC 
> 4103. This is not a threat to RFC 4103. The service provider setting 
> up a service must be aware of the overhead and the services are that. 
> The services in the different countries works fine. The overhead is of 
> no problem for the end users or companies that do not offer services 
> or products based on the TS. You should only follow this 
> to-be-standard if you set up your system with the correct dimentions. 
> In fact the TS states that it sets no requirements on product vendors, 
> software designers or operators that do not use the TS. The point is 
> to set up the right dimentions.
>
> A video conversation based on sign language anyway requirers much more 
> band width than any text dialouge, so it is not any extreme loads.
>
> An important point is that this is ONLY for people with disabilities 
> and the people that they are in contact with. It will not grow into a 
> new Skype or anything like that. It is an assistive way of 
> communication for people that have hearing impairments or are death. 
> It is for instance a national relay swervice in Germany and a lot of 
> people live there. The service for hearing impaired people in Germany 
> has a service with no problems due to the overhead. That is my 
> understanding.
>
Real-Time Text as defined in RFC4103 is intended to be used by all 
users. Not ONLY for people who are hearing or speech impaired. Not only 
to use it with a relay service. But for day to day telephony. And 
emergency calls.
A serious danger is that ETSI TS with a form of SIP MESSAGE RTT will not 
stay with just 1 relay manufacturer. You then will get that more 
operators and systems may implement it. And then we have 2 issues:
1. Besides RFC4103, there is then another real-time text standard. 
Approved by ETSI, an organisation respected by many implementors. This 
will add confusion.
2. The IETF recommendation against SIP MESSAGE RTT is not for nothing. 
We will see many more people who will use it and many SIP networks will 
suddenly see high bandwidth usage on the SIP Signaling paths. And any 
operator policy on SIP MESSAGE systems will mess up (e.g. SIP MESSAGE = 
an SMS or IM message, what if they charge per message? or allow only SIP 
MESSAGE with low priority and throttle if traffic is too high?).

Even if it is possible to keep the SIP MESSAGE RTT form on the Relay 
network. Then we will still get issues that any SIP Proxy from your 
local access provider (cable/adsl, or your enterprise network/company 
network). It is asking for problems. I as a deaf person do not want to 
be informed by the company network admin that they locked me out due 
clogging their SIP proxies.

> The idea with the TS is to offer mainstream solutions. This can work 
> in any mobile phone, any computer (Linux, Mac, pc). It is not hindered 
> by any router that might be part of an ADSL offer from a operator. It 
> works with the TS all the way to mobile telephones using GSM all the 
> time and for mobile telephones that sometimes fall down to GSM when 
> the 3G has poor coverage.
>
RFC4103 can do all this. RFC4103 can also use GSM data as well. TS does 
not solve a problem. Since there is no problem. The TS mayl only create 
problems.
>
> The TS offers text in a way that secures that each character reach the 
> other end unchanged. It is based on TCP. It is possible that others 
> prefer RFC 4103 and I hear that it is not so common with lost 
> characters anymore. It is based on RTP. I know it is strong opinions 
> about if RTP or TCP is the right way to send text character by 
> character. That is not the point here. We secure interoperability with 
> RFC 4103. Not everyone must use this TS. It is a free choice. It is a 
> gap filler and the TS confirms that RFC 4103 is the way to reach 
> interoperability.
>
SIP Message does not require TCP. It can be UDP. And I believe that 
company who build and maintains the hardware/servers/systems does not 
support TCP in their SIP systems ( even if there is a SHALL for TCP 
support in RFC 3261 )!
And RFC4103 has also the way to secure that each character reaches the 
endpoint unchanged. Trust me, I am using RFC4103 and on mixed networks 
under different conditions. And character drops are not something I see 
happening unless the network is so bad that video and audio are broken 
already. (and that would also lead to dropped SIP MESSAGES which would 
be many more missed characters). Early implementations had the character 
drop issue..but that is all fixed now.

There is also an question I have. Maybe I am reading the company 
services wrong. But they do not even USE SIP MESSAGE for RTT in their 
system today!
It is more some xml text that they use.
So I do not understand why they even push SIP MESSAGE RTT through ETSI 
if they do not use it. And if it is for interoperability..well RFC4103 
is there anyway working today.
There is not even a need for a gap filler.

Thank you for your mail and I hope we can solve this and simply work 
with the Real-Time Text Taskforce. We could then focus on RFC4103 in 
Relay services (and Total Conversation for sign language relay 
services). PTS can together with the R3TF to set up the best strategy 
for such relay services and procurements. Which can help other countries 
to set the correct procurement protocols so that a relay will really 
allow people who are hearing or speech impaired to have equal telecom 
access and use of the relay service.

And any technical problems that then come up..well we have the IETF, ITU 
and ETSI to tackle that then. :-)

Sincerely

Arnoud

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