The MMX was first developed back in the early 00, or more exactly in 2001. At that point, textphones or TTYs were still the only viable way for people who were Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing to make a phone call. We developed a cloud-based TTY service for the then Swedish Authority of Schools for the Deaf. The Danish incumbent telecom operator, Teledanmark (nowadays TDC) soon after that requested us to set up a web-based text relay, which was the first of its kind in the world.
Technology started to move fast then:
- 2003 WISDOM project – MMX was the platform used by the EU project to set up then unique mobile communication services for the Deaf, “Wireless Services for Deaf people On the Move”, connecting 3G video to interpreters. It became the first VRS available for mobile phones!
- 2004 Swedish Video Relay Service became SIP-based with the MMX platform.
- 2004 – The regional government of Örebro, Sweden, replaced all of its textphones/TTYs for TsN – Text services on the Network
- 2005 myMMX was launched to provide Windows software for video and text communication – Total Conversation
- 2005 – Tess, the German Video and Text Relay was launched by Deutche Telekom
- 2005, on the same year – the Swedish Text Relay became wireless and IP based using the MMX platform.
Around that time, all Telecom Relay Services in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) were running using MMX – both video and text relay.
Standards became a norm – SIP, RFC 2793 which later became RFC 4103 and now is RFC 9071 – Real-Time Text, and Total Conversation.
MMX was then part of the telecom equipment provider Ericsson. But in 2008 nWise started as a management buyout – the MMX was in secure hands and continued to be developed.
More European countries started to use the MMX soon afterwards – Belgium, Switzerland… MMX was then launched in VRS services in the United States, that was in 2012. The year after, 2013, the MMX was launched in the Netherlands, and in 2014 in the United Kingdom.
In those years, the MMX was also pioneered in different countries: Australia, Japan, Brazil and Thailand.
In 2014 we made history: RTT calls directly to the 112 service in the Netherlands – a pioneer service that still holds its position!
In 2016 we launched the first videophone for DeafBlind individuals, which in 2020 went mobile on iOS!
In 2019 we were proud to deliver our first VRS platform in Arabic, to Dubai.
From three people in 2002 to 23 in 2022! MMX is the only standard platform for Telecom Relay Services and RTT to Emergency Services that is widely available, widely used, in so many countries.