Now there's no excuse. Agilent Technologies has come up with a design system enabling manufacturers of mobile phones to easily ensure their handsets meet all the hearing-aid-compatibility (HAC) standards mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The news release and associated product material on the new Antenna Modeling Design System (AMDS) are worth looking at because they give a tutorial on electro-magnetic radition and the shielding technology required to assure your hearing aids are actually able to hear the sounds coming out of your cell phone. "By February 2008, all wireless carriers in the U.S. must ensure that 50 percent of their phones are hearing-aid compatible," says Agilent Product Marketing Manager Erwin De Baetselier. "Today, we are leading the industry by offering HAC compatibility tests in our EM simulation environment, ensuring that designers of wireless devices will be able to meet these important and rigorous specifications." I've written before about the foot-dragging by mobile phone manfacturers unwilling to put the extra effort into designing hearing-aid-compatible phones, and it's good to see a leading supplier of components and design services taking the FCC mandate seriously.
Posted by David at 02:13 PM on Sep 11, 2007 in AMPLIFIED PHONES, NEW PRODUCTS, TECHNOLOGY
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All this FCC mandate the cell phone manufactures to have 50% compatible phones is great. I hope they don't make them all M1 or T1 just to be labeled as hearing aid compatible. I think, least in my view, the volume dB should be listed as some phone are loud and not loud. Some have low ratings to very or super low ratings. These phones are useless to me but do know they are phone with real voulme. A mandate volume control 16 to 20 dB should be implemented by FCC. I think is resonable but I know that will never happen.
