While it may be years before anything could be done for hearing losses with stem cells, I’d rather deal with an equally invasive procedure that would leave me “healed” instead of going through one that just prolongs actual advancement. Given how functional stem cells are, further research would be beneficial to everyone on the planet.

T-Mobile currently offers 9 hearing aid-compatible cell phones, only 4 of which are still available for purchase on the website. Customer Care told me it could be possible to still get ahold of the other ones in-store, if they haven’t sold out of their stock.

I’m not sure how they are going to be able to comply with the FCC’s ruling that 50% of their phones have to be hearing aid-compatible by February 18th, 2008. My guess? Yet another lengthened “phase-in” period will be granted.

Until then, the only viable options are either ripping out your hearing aid (if you have a moderate hearing loss like mine) and using the phone as normal, or using such devices as TecEar’s T-Link into the phone, or having a phone compatible with BlueTooth to use something like TecEar’s MaxIT.