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CapTel likely to unveil plans: Announcement expected today for call center that would create up to 600 jobs(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Aug. 9--A Madison company providing telecommunications services for people with hearing loss is expected to announce today its plans to open a second operation that could create up to 600 call-center jobs within five years in downtown Milwaukee. CapTel Inc. would expand its operations to Reuss Federal Plaza, 310 W. Wisconsin Ave. The company could have 200 employees there by next year, Mayor Tom Barrett said last week. CapTel has declined to comment publicly on its plans. Gov. Jim Doyle's office said Tuesday that the governor will announce "a significant new business investment" during a news conference today. That news conference will be at the offices of Independence First, a non-profit group that helps disabled people. According to the governor's office, the business investment is expected to create up to 600 new jobs in Milwaukee. Barrett, who met with CapTel President Robert Engelke in June, said last week that "all signs are pointing" to an expansion into downtown by the privately held, fast-growing company. The city would provide a $250,000 forgivable loan to help finance the development. CapTel would not have to repay the loan if it meets certain job-creation goals, including 200 positions by 2007, 525 positions by 2009 and 600 positions by 2011, Barrett said. A state Department of Commerce spokeswoman confirmed last week that state officials were talking with CapTel executives about possible financial assistance. The company, a division of Madison-based Ultratec Inc., provides a captioned telephone that is popular among people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The equipment is used with a service that relies on voice-recognition software and telephone operators to allow phone conversations by people with hearing loss. CapTel employees, using voice-recognition software, transcribe everything the other party in a phone conversation says into written text, which appears on a window on the CapTel phone. According to the company's Web site, the captions appear almost simultaneously with the spoken word. That allows CapTel phone users to understand everything that is said, either by hearing it or by reading it. The CapTel system has been seen as an improvement over an older telephone system for people with hearing loss. Under that system -- known as text telephone relay, or TTY -- people with hearing loss use a special phone to type what they want to say. An operator reads the message and repeats it over the phone to the other party. Ultratec launched the CapTel system in 2001 in Wisconsin. The publicly financed service is now available in 38 states for people who have hearing loss. There are 31 million Americans with hearing loss, according to the Hearing Loss Association of America, a national advocacy group. That number is projected to rise to 40 million within one generation, the group says. |