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Building support for trials

Ed Bosson of the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) envisioned Deaf people communicating with videophones more than 10 years before the FCC mandated it nationwide. Ed contacted Mark Seeger of Sprint Relay and discussed the possibilities. Mark contacted Sprint technicians to see if Ed’s vision was feasible. They reported that it was, so Ed brought the idea to the Texas PUC.

It took Ed a long time to be able to convince the PUC and get some help from a lawyer in interpreting. First, Ed convinced his supervisor and then one-by-one, the Commissioners, that video relay should become a part of statewide Telecom Relay Service offerings. They authorized Ed to manage the first video relay service trials. Sprint was the first service provider to conduct the Texas video relay tests. Bosson would later receive national awards from Smithsonian Computerworld and TDI for his work with VRS.

In 1995, the first trial was run by Sprint in Austin and was limited to four public call centers.

The second trial occurred in 1997 and served ten cities in Texas. At that point, Sprint and Hanwave Interpreting partnered to provide service. Jon Hodson of Sorenson Communications worked with Ed Bosson during the early stages and provided video conferencing software during the VRS trial in Texas. (At this point the service was called "Video Relay Interpreting" or VRI, which a name that now refers to Video Remote Interpreting. Linda Nelson is credited with changing the term from VRI to VRS.)

Later, Hanwave Interpreting Service was bought by Communication Service for the Deaf, and Sprint expanded their relay subcontract to include VRS services in addition to the established TRS services.

In 2002 Washington and Texas tested a web based VRS statewide, with CSDVRS providing VRS services via the Internet to Washington state.