The service, known as Relay Iowa, is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with no restrictions on the number of calls placed or on their length. This valuable communications tool gives all individuals who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind or having difficulty speaking the opportunity to make personal and business calls just like any other standard telephone user. Both TTY and voice users may initiate calls through Relay Iowa.

Why Relay Iowa?

Partnership
The Iowa legislature passed a law and created the Dual Party Relay Service, naming the Iowa Utilities Board as administrator. The Iowa Utilities board then contracted with Sprint to provide telephone relay service in Iowa. Relay Iowa has been in operation since August 1, 1992. As of Jan 1st, 2005, Hamilton Relay Service assumed operation of Relay Iowa.

Reliability
Relay Iowa uses state-of-the-art technology and equipment in bringing its service to relay customers in Iowa. For example, Relay Iowa's system lets callers store personal reference information such as frequently called numbers, preferred call type, long distance carrier and other data using a customer profile. This allows calls to be processed faster and more efficiently.

Convenience
Relay Iowa delivers feature-rich service to make calling easy and convenient. In addition to supporting a wide array of call types -- TTY, Voice Carryover, Hearing Carryover and more -- Relay Iowa also provides features such as voicemail or answering machine retrieval.

Quality
The key to Relay Iowa's quality of service are the Communication Assistants who handle each call. Sensitive and skilled, Relay Iowa's Communication Assistants receive extensive training. In addition, Relay Iowa routinely monitors performance to ensure that quality remains high.