In the most basic understanding, “hearing aid-compatibility” is the ability to wear hearing aids and use a cell phone without receiving radio frequency emissions and electromagnetic interference while the aids are set to the telecoil (T-coil/inductive coupling) function.
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.
