Ameritech Introduces Talking Call Waiting - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, Sept 6, 1999

Ameritech Wednesday introduced Talking Call Waiting, a new service that gives Call Waiting a voice and tells customers who's calling them.

Nearly half of U.S. phone customers already use Call Waiting, and Talking Call Waiting is the first significant improvement to Call Waiting since its introduction 30 years ago. Call Waiting beeps to notify you of an incoming call, and Talking Call Waiting announces the name of the caller following the beep.

Talking Call Waiting employs sophisticated voice synthesis technology to pronounce the caller's name as accurately as possible. Ameritech has applied for two patents on this first-of-its-kind service.

"Talking Call Waiting takes our most popular call management service and makes it even better," said Diane Primo, president of Ameritech product management. "Customers tell us that Talking Call Waiting relieves the anxiety of how to handle a Call Waiting beep by giving our customers control over whether they should or shouldn't answer the beep. Almost half of our customers already have Call Waiting, so they're familiar with how the service works."

Talking Call Waiting is being introduced on a city-by-city basis in the Ameritech region. It's available beginning Wednesday in the Milwaukee metropolitan area to one out of three households and will be expanded to seven of 10 households later this year. The service was introduced in Chicago last month and will be introduced in Detroit later this year and in Cleveland, Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis next year.

Industry Analyst Fred Voit with The Yankee Group said, "Ameritech's Talking Call Waiting will prove particularly attractive to consumers and others who use their answering machines to screen incoming calls. It takes the guesswork out of accepting an incoming call via Call Waiting."

Primo noted that, "Even customers who don't currently have Call Waiting tell us they really like Talking Call Waiting, because they know who's calling them."

Talking Call Waiting is easy to use and works in conjunction with Call Waiting. When you're on the phone with someone, an automated voice announces the name of the person calling. Customers can click over to take the call, just like they do now for Call Waiting.

Talking Call Waiting costs $2.50 per month and works on every phone in the house. If the caller's name is unidentified or blocked, "unknown call" or "blocked call" is announced. No special equipment is needed, but customers must have Call Waiting, which is $5 per month, to make the service work. In Wisconsin, there's a one-time installation fee of $5, which will be waived if customers order before Oct. 30.

To order the service, customers can call 800-709-LINK or order online at www.ameritech.com/talking .

Ameritech serves millions of customers in 50 states and 40 countries. Ameritech provides a full range of communications services, including local and long-distance telephone and data, cellular, directories, paging, security, cable TV, Internet and more. One of the world's 100 largest companies, Ameritech ( www.ameritech.com ) has 70,000 employees, 1 million shareowners and $33 billion in assets.