Sprint buys contract for Mass. phone service for deaf

From: Boston Business Journal - Boston,MA,USA - Apr 6, 2004

Boston Business Journal

Sprint Corp. has acquired a contract to handle telephone relay services in Massachusetts, providing deaf people several options for communicating over the telephone.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Vista Information Technologies Inc. previously provided such services for Verizon Communications Inc. via an 80-person operations center in Holyoke. That facility is now owned by Sprint, which has subcontracted its operation to Communications Services for the Deaf, a nonprofit organization based in South Dakota.

Virginia-based Vista has operated relay services in Massachusetts since 1996, originally as a subcontractor to MCI Communications. Verizon extended its contract with Vista last summer, at which point Vista began subcontracting some of the work to Sprint.

The contract expires in the summer of 2005, though it comes with two one-year renewal options.

Sprint Relay provides services in 32 states and Puerto Rico, and to the federal government.

© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.