VOCALIS ANNOUNCES GLOBAL AVAILABILITY FOR NEW GENERATION OF ADVANCED TELEPHONE SERVICES

Vocalis Group plc, the Cambridge UK based provider of speech recognition technology and telephony solutions, today announces global availability for a new SPEECHtel™ intelligent network peripheral platform and range of applications (see editor’s notes) for telecomms licenced operators, both fixed and mobile.

Following their development in the USA during the late 1980s, intelligent networks are being introduced rapidly around the world. Intelligent networks provide the necessary framework for creating modern telephone services such as toll free numbers. The SPEECHtel suite of applications will be welcomed by the network operators in this area of increasing revenues* as a way of introducing sophisticated networks services in a quick and easy manner.

Intelligent networks divide the switching function of telephone exchanges and the provision of advanced services into separate logical entities, with a standard communications protocol between them. Vocalis SPEECHtel works in intelligent networks, providing the ability for licenced operators quickly and easily to deploy a wide range of cost saving and customer friendly advanced services. Additionally, SPEECHtel services are designed using Vocalis SpeechWare™, Vocalis’ own speech recognition technology which makes new services simple and intuitive to use; users just say what they want to do, instead of navigating complex sets of tone button driven menus.

The Vocalis SPEECHtel platform is field proven with several operators in Asia and Europe. Running under the industry proven UNIX operating system, and based on the latest generation Intel processors, the new platform utilises industry standard hardware and provides connectivity to a multitude of third party interfaces. It offers a full range of resilience options for central office installations, including dual power supplies, alarms and RAID disks, and is presented in rack configurations to suit customer requirements. Capable now of close integration into homogenous or mixed supplier networks, SPEECHtel supports internationally agreed Intelligent Network protocols (ETSI, INAP, CS1). A graphical Service Creation Environment, together with operations and maintenance sub-systems, makes it easy to monitor and enhance services quickly and easily.

"Now more than ever, SPEECHtel can deliver real savings and competitive advantage to fixed and mobile licenced operators by automating costly network services and providing a new range of voice activated personal telephone services," says Jonathan Hart, Sales Director at Vocalis. "It is a modular and scaleable intelligent peripheral, and can be deployed in traditional networks as well as full scale intelligent networks. It is designed to be robust and flexible, enabling the rapid development and deployment of reliable network services."

"SPEECHtel enables operators to offer value-added speech driven services either on an individual or a network-wide basis. These services can be bundled or offered individually, provided within standard tariffs or through subscription, like many existing value-added services," says Charles Halle, Chief Executive Officer at Vocalis. "As we approach the Millenium, services provided through SPEECHtel systems will form the key differentiator for telcos competing for market share."

* Schema, a leading industry consultancy, estimates that intelligent network services in Europe generated revenues of US$4.4 billion in 1996, which will grow at 24 per cent annually to reach US$16 billion in 2002.

Editor’s Notes

SPEECHtel service applications include:

• front desk call centre service
  - providing an Intelligent Network based Call Centre, greeting callers to the front desk, prompting a response and then automatically routing calls to the required service
• directory enquiries, with call completion option
  - once a number is located, offering to place calls; simply say "dial"
• fully automated directory enquiries
  - with databases holding people and place names, ready to respond to spoken requests
• person to person calls
  - enabling callers to have a call placed directly to a named party, simply by using a set of speech commands
• collect call
  - enabling the usual dialogue needed to place a "reverse charge" call to be conducted wholly by the automated system
• voice activated dialling
  - providing a network based, handset independent, capability to make calls using your voice instead of a keypad

• universal personal telephony
  - one number for users, and you talk to the network to transfer calls between home, mobile and office