Vocalis wins new orders for SPEECHtel, adds suite of JAVA-based management functions.

Vocalis, the international speech technologies Group, has won a series of new orders from telephone companies for its SPEECHtel platform, and at the same time added a range of powerful JAVA-based functions to make SPEECHtel easier to administer and maintain.

The orders have come from both fixed and mobile telecommunications operators, including Eircell, Ireland's leading mobile telephone operator, Eircom (formerly Telecom Eireann), and the Greek operator Stet Hellas.

Designed for use in intelligent networks, SPEECHtel allows operators to deploy quickly and easily a wide variety of cost-saving and customer friendly automated call handling services.

Eircell is using SPEECHtel in an innovative way by combining it with its Pre-Payment Service, exploiting the platform's speech output facilities to produce a fully automated announcement service. SPEECHtel makes it possible for voice messages to be recorded and edited, using a prompt-editing workstation, then automatically dialled and played out to selected Eircell subscribers.

The order for a SPEECHtel platform from Eircom is for its customer care call centre in Dublin. This will provide an automated account enquiry service to Eircom subscribers. The Greek operator Stet Hellas, a new customer for Vocalis, which is using SPEECHtel to provide prompt playout and ICR capabilities in their CS1 Intelligent Network.

SPEECHtel operates as an intelligent peripheral (IP) in Intelligent Networks, and to make the operation, administration and maintenance (OA & M) of IPs easier is the aim of several new functional modules developed by Vocalis. All the modules feature a GUI interface and as they are JAVA-based, can be run on a wide range of hardware platforms. Another major benefit is that they enable operators to handle OA & M tasks from a single centralised location, as well as locally at the site of each IP. Functions provided by the new JAVA tool include:

Distribution

Allows users to perform actions simultaneously across a series of IPs. For example, new prompts and applications, like amended dialogues or a collect call service, can be implemented very easily and quickly from a single location. Previously, each IP had to be accessed separately.

Configuration

Provides access to the configuration files within IPs so they can be amended, for example to alter log-in settings.

Statistics

Enables operators to view statistics, such as number, duration or type of calls, and to send them to a different location, for inputting into a dedicated program, for example.

Alarms

Provides views of all the alarm functions within SPEECHtel, relating to hardware elements such as CPU usage, disk space, memory availability, and also to software.

Security

Allows new administrators to be added to the system, and current entries to be altered or deleted.

Peter Hauser, Sales Director at Vocalis commenting on these recent developments "SPEECHtel is an established product with a proven track record of successfully deployed system around the world. 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. These new developments just go to prove that we are constantly looking at ways of improving our products and services to make things easier for telcos."