Web on the phone - Technology Information

Communications News, Feb, 2001

Speech recognition technology may soon make enterprise communications--both inside and outside of businesses--as easy as clicking on a Web link. Using the touchtone, which involves multiple steps, could be obsolete within the next several years. While speech recognition is nothing new, the linking of information--which allows callers to go directly to the link they need by simply speaking it--is the next step that could offer enterprises large savings in time and cost.

"At the highest level, it's a new medium for business exchange," says Steve Chambers, vice president of worldwide marketing for Boston-based SpeechWorks. "You can, with your voice, transact business between companies the same way you can with your fingers on a keyboard." SpeechWorks forged an alliance with iBasis of Burlington, MA, an Internet-based communications company, to provide the technology for carriers, service providers and large enterprises.

The new technology also could become key for employees within enterprise intranets. "Job posts, directory assistance, employee extensions, help desk, purchasing--your imagination can go pretty much as far as you want," says Thomas Schalk, CTO with Philips Speech Processing in Dallas.

Philips' speech recognition technology is being used internationally in half a dozen voice portals--services that allow callers to request news and weather, for example, through a voice-activated system. Most of these providers are telcos. More recently, Philips Speech Processing, based in Vienna, Austria, teamed up with Brooktrout Software of Southborough, MA, to support 365 Corp.'s development and launch of the U.K.'s first comprehensive voice portal--allowing subscribers to access Internet-based information and business forums, using their own voices, over standard or mobile telephones.

Roger Matus, vice president of new products and technology for iBasis, says one major trend is voice portal companies "trying to put a speech front end to Web information." Another development, he adds, "is the trend of enterprises and organizations to deploy their own voice portals, and provide information in a friendly, easy-to-use manner. They like to manage the customer experience." To build their own voice portals, enterprises can purchase technology from companies such as SpeechWorks and leverage a communications network for access like iBasis' global IP network.

With enterprise portals, Matus sees an increasing need for business alliances "linking" to each other. "Many of these are going to want to cooperate with each other in selling various things. The result is going to be a Web that is not too different from the way the Internet looks today."

Speech recognition links are expected to be common-place shortly. "Three to five years down the road, you and I will expect a speech system to answer the phone when we call companies," Chambers predicts.