SpeechWorks Establishes Telecommunications Business Group as Demand for Speech-Activated Services Soars - SpeechWorks International Telecommunications Business Group - Company Operations

Cambridge Telcom Report, Oct 4, 1999

SpeechWorks International, Inc., the leading provider of conversational speech recognition technology and products for e-business solutions, announced Monday at Conversations '99, SpeechWorks' annual user conference, that it has formed a Telecommunications Business Group. The group will focus on developing customized speech interfaces and solutions for major telecommunications carriers and enterprise service providers. Todd Barber, who has been with SpeechWorks since 1998 and has 12 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, was named Vice President, Telco, to lead the group.

The U.S. telecommunications market was $467.2 billion in 1998, up 11.4 percent over 1997 (Telecommunications Industry Association). The wireless market grew to $50.2 billion in 1998, a 14.3 percent increase over 1997. These statistics alone show the massive growth in the market and the opportunity for enhanced phone services that speech-activated interfaces make possible.

SpeechWorks' new group will immediately focus on giving telecommunications companies the support and technology necessary to profit from speech in their businesses. One way that SpeechWorks will achieve this is by partnering with telcos to bring SpeechPortal to market.

Announced Monday as a corporate initiative, SpeechPortal will let callers pick up the phone and get personalized service and information, simply by talking.

"Having just raised over $24 million, doubled our staff since January and signed up over 20 industry-leading partners to support the launch of SpeechSite, now is the time to expand our team to work with the major telco players," said Stuart R. Patterson, CEO, SpeechWorks. "We've appointed Todd Barber to lead this strategic effort based on his in-depth knowledge of telco and years of speech industry experience. Todd's mission will be to bring an array of speech-enabled enhanced services to the market by partnering with leading carriers worldwide."

"In the past few years, telecommunications companies have been distracted by the Internet, Y2K and data services, at the expense of providing customers with new, value-driven voice services," said Todd Barber, vice president, telco. "With our advanced speech recognition solutions and dedicated business group, telcos can now give callers the ability to speak into a phone for speech-enabled customer service, call management, directory assistance and personal assistant services." Partnerships will focus on enhanced services like voice-activated dialing (VAD) and information portals as well as speech access to customer services such as billing information, trouble reporting, change of address and many others.

To support the new telco group, SpeechWorks recently hired an outstanding team of speech scientists and solutions developers from Nortel, the telecommunications giant. These engineers have extensive experience bringing directory and location assistance and other speech-activated solutions to market with major carriers including BC Tel, Bell Canada, Bell South and US West. These systems have assisted over two billion callers since 1997.

SpeechWorks already has a long history of deploying telecommunications services through partnerships with leading companies and suppliers including: Aspect Telecommunications, BellSouth, Comverse, CS Telecom, Dialogic/Intel, IBM, InterVoice-Brite, Lucent, MCIWorldcom, Nextlink Interactive, Singapore Telecom, SSG and many others. Working with SpeechWorks, BellSouth IntelliVentures introduced one of the first speech recognition systems to the public in 1997. Its unique 511 service, known as "VAL" for Voice Activated Link, allows callers to get the latest weather, sports scores and stock quotes around the clock, just by speaking into the phone. BellSouth and SpeechWorks are working to deploy even more advanced personalized services.

The SpeechWorks Telecommunications Business Group is committed to providing its partners with unmatched technology and tools, packaged speech applications, professional services and support and co-branding opportunities through the SpeechWorks Here program.

SpeechWorks International, Inc. is the creator of SpeechSite, the first solution to bring the web model of self-service to the phone, enabling corporations to greet callers, route their calls and respond to requests 24 hours a day, seven days a week. SpeechSite is based on the company's award winning, multi-language solution, SpeechWorks 5.0, a solution that sets a new standard in speech-enabled e-business with unprecedented recognition accuracy and ease of deployment. SpeechWorks' customer base comprises over ten of the Fortune 100 including BellSouth, Continental Airlines, Guardian, Hewlett-Packard, McKesson HBOC, NEXTLINK/FedEx and United Airlines among many others.

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with offices worldwide, SpeechWorks is a privately held corporation with financing from venture capital firms, Intel Corporation and SAP. The company's solutions incorporate several patented technologies, and are based on research originally conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SpeechWorks Here is a mark of industry excellence. FMI: http://www.speechworks.com.