Awards

The national TDI organization, at its 15th Biennial International Conference (July 2003), awarded NXi and Thomas McLaughlin its “Andrew Saks Engineering Award” in recognition for NXi’s “outstanding contributions in the development of Internet-based text telecommunications that make possible Internet Protocol Relay Services.”

Patents

NXi has received numerous patents for its innovations. See the section on patents in this web site.

Company History

The company began business as NXi Communications, Inc. in 1995. NXi was formed from an earlier company called Nexion, Inc. formed in 1993, which in turn was created from a contract engineering company called Nexus Engineering.

NXi’s original focus was the development of a “text telephone system” usable by organizations wishing to communicate with deaf persons. NXi received multiple grants from the National Institutes on Deafness and other Communications Disorders (NIDCD), which is part of NIH. NXi’s focus has been on the “organization side” in creating technology to make organizations accessible.

Since 1995 NXi has introduced numerous innovations in the field of text and multi-media telephony. Some milestones and achievements are shown below.

In 2007, NXi created a “spin-off” company called “NexTalk, Inc.” NexTalk’s mandate is to focus on deaf and hard-of-hearing applications of NXi’s technology platform.

Recently, in 2008, NXi released version 7 of its “NTS” platform. NTS-7.0 has over 3 million lines of code and is a complete and very flexible platform for audio, text, and video communications.

As discussed below, NXi’s focus now is to apply its NTS-7 platform to new “mainstream” markets of business video conferencing, and message notifications services.

NXi achievements and milestones since it was formed in 1995 include:

1995	NXi introduced the industry’s first high speed modem that is compatible with the TTY devices used by the deaf, the “NexCom 300.” Both an internal and external version are designed, and over 20,000 units are sold. The NexCom 300 is used by individuals, organizations, and major relay services.
1996	NXi released the industry’s first TCP/IP network based client/server product for TTY and text communications, called “NTS” or “Network Telephony Services.”
1998	Under contract from MCI Relay Service, NXi designed the industry’s first T1 digital modem supporting modem and TTY. MCI used this 48-port T1 modem card in its relay services platform with approximately 800 relay agents.
1998	NTS 3.0 is released.
	NXi designed the NTS-3 architecture in partnership with Nortel.
	NTS-3 is adopted by federal agencies and other large organizations.
1999	NXi introduced the industry’s first TTY compatible modem using a standard voice modem, called “NexTalk-VM.”
2000	NTS 4.0 is released, with support for both analog lines and T1 trunks. NTS 4.0 is sold to over 200 organizations.
	NXi, in partnership with MCI Relay, introduces the industry’s first “internet relay” service.
2003	NXi’s contributions to the development of Internet Relay are recognized by TDI.
2005	NTS 5.0 for call centers released.
2006	NTS 6.0 is released.
	The number of organizations using NTS climbs to over 350 with the release of NTS-6.
2007	NXi forms its first spin-out company, “NexTalk, Inc.”
2008	NTS 7.0 released.
	The NTS 7.0 platform has over 3 million lines of code, and is a complete video, audio, and text “anything to anything” communications platform with many unique features.