Posted: 11/1998
Technically Speaking
Voice Recognition May Soon Unseat DTMF
By Jennifer Knapp
"Microsoft has demonstrated in PCs (personal computers) the power that control of the user interface provides," says William Meisel, president of TMA Associates, Tarzana, Calif. "Their Windows graphical user interface is what most buyers see as the PC. In telephony, the voice user interface plays that role."
Speech recognition will make possible the automation of tasks by telephone that couldn't be automated before, Meisel adds, making the telephone more like an electronic personal assistant than merely a way to connect to another person.
Speech recognition's ascent is not imminent. International Data Corp. (IDC), Framingham, Mass., says the timeline for widespread acceptance of residential voice-activated services is two years. However, IDC predicts tenfold growth in the market, from $10 million in 1997 to more than $100 million by 2002.
While it may not be until the next millennium before speech-enabled services find widespread acceptance in the residential wireline market, improvements in the technology by vendors is making deployments in telecom--wireless and wireline--more cost-efficient and feasible.
Better, Cheaper
The laws of supply and demand have driven the price for speech-recognition technology to an affordable level. "Costs have dropped rapidly, both for the basic [speech recognition] technology and for the hardware required to use that technology," Meisel says. Cost is, therefore, no longer a roadblock to deployment, he adds.
Cost reductions are due, in part, to new platforms that can be integrated into existing networks easily, in a building block environment, so overhauls to an existing system are not necessary and services can be introduced one at a time or in bunches.
In its discussions with carriers, Compaq Computer Corp., Houston, discovered the lack of the right tools was preventing carriers from deploying services using the voice user interface (VUI). "Carriers were looking for multiapplication platforms and tool sets to allow them to rapidly deploy new differentiated services," says Chris Ebling, director of the call-processing platforms business unit for Compaq's telecom network solutions group. Carriers have been testing equipment in this arena for a few years, but "they spent a fair amount of money on a single application that was not scaleable, wasn't expandable and didn't support other applications," Ebling says.
Compaq's VUI-based platforms are outfitted with a "service- independent building block-based service creation capability," which means, in other words, it plays well with others and allows a carrier to build new speech-enabled services on the same platform.
In addition to becoming more cost efficient, speech recognition is becoming far more intelligent. "The technology is evolving," says Mary Stanhope, director of product marketing at Priority Call Management Inc., Wilmington, Mass. "It is getting to the point where you can use more natural speech. Instead of learning the command, 'Connect,' you can say, 'Yes, I'll speak to Erika.'"
Whether consumers want, or even need, speech-enabled services is not readily known. However, Meisel says, General Magic Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., which launched its Portico VUI-based personal assistant for the wireless market in July, recently announced its rollout was so successful, it is advancing its advertising schedule to reach a broader audience. The service, which costs $19 a month, includes long distance, voice mail, e-mail, address books, calendars and access to Internet content such as news and stock quotes.
The Quickening
While consumer demand typically is the driver of market growth, experts say it is the vendors that are hauling this train. Whether a customer likes a new product "really has nothing to do with whether a market develops," says Walt Tetschner, president of Tern Systems, Acton, Mass. "We look at markets and where something is developing based very heavily on what the vendors are doing."
And over the last 10 months vendors are doing a lot--primarily in wireless applications for the technology; but wireline applications are not far behind.
The core group of vendors driving the development and adoption of speech-recognition services include Voice Control Systems Inc. (VCS), Dallas; Applied Language Techno-logies Inc. (ALTech), San Francisco; Nuance Communica-tions, Menlo Park, Calif.; and Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V., Burlington, Mass. These companies have been partnering fast and furiously during 1998 bringing the necessary technology to both carriers and solution providers. (See Vendor Alliances chart on page 84.)
VCS, for example, partnered in March with Finland-based Tecnomen, a designer and manufacturer of enhanced services systems for telecom networks and paging systems. The companies worked together to integrate VCS' speech software platform with Tecnomen's enhanced services system, enabling end users to access and control a variety of applications by using speech rather than a touch-tone interface.
Three months after this pairing, Tecnomen brought its enhanced services platform, complete with VCS' technology, to Tele Danmark, the incumbent provider of voice and data communications in Denmark. Tele Danmark now offers VUI-based unified messaging to its subscribers using the platform.
ALTech also has advanced the enhanced services arena with its voice-recognition technology through a partnership with Voicetek Corp., Chelmsford, Calif., a manufacturer of software applications and platforms for network-based services. Voicetek integrated ALTech's SpeechWorks software into Generations, an enhanced services platform. Max-Reach, an open, modular suite of advanced intelligent network (IN)-based applications built on the Generations platform, connects to a service provider's signaling system 7 (SS7) protocol stacks, communicating with switches and linking to service control points (SCPs) for IN signaling. This allows service providers to launch applications such as voice dialing, personal assistant, single number service and unified messaging.
Functions of these services all operate under a VUI interface, which offers:
- Hands-free dialing using natural language commands that allow for differences in dialect, accent and grammar;
- Verbal management of all communications, including accessing messages, screening incoming calls and routing calls to predetermined destinations;
- Call routing to a predetermined destination; and
- Provision for a common message storage area to access to voice mail, fax mail and e-mail from a telephone, including a text-to-speech e-mail reader.
These speech-recognition vendors, however, are not the only companies pushing to advance the technology in telecommunications. Heavy-hitters in the computing industry also are weighing in. Since the beginning of 1998, IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., has partnered with both ALTech and VCS to integrate speech recognition into its telephony solutions. In addition, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., made an investment in ALTech to excel the power of speech recognition processors--an improvement that Tern Systems' Tetschner says is vitally important to moving the technology forward.
The Wireless Equation
Acceptance of voice recognition technology in the mobile wireless arena is already here. Safety likely can be cited as the main reason why the wireless world is seeing more speech-recognition activity than wireline.
PTT Telecom, the major telecommunications provider for the Netherlands, launched a voice dialing system in January for its global system for mobile (GSM) network based on a modular voice processing system from Glenayre Electronics Inc., Charlotte, N.C. The motivating factor for launching the service was so "PTT Telecom subscribers could place calls from their mobile phone without taking their eyes off the road or their hands off the wheel," according to a company press release.
Early advancement in wireless-based speech-recognition technology has brought many VUI-based services this year for mobile phone users. Bell Mobility and Pacific Bell, for example, both partnered with Wildfire Communications Inc., Lexington, Mass., to bring Wild- fire, a voice-activated personal assistant, to their mobile subscribers in Toronto, California and Nevada. Wildfire offers personalized answering services, which include voice mail, call display, call forwarding, call routing and voice-activated dialing through the VUI.
Other VUI applications for wireless include a dictation service from CellNet Data Systems Inc., San Carlos, Calif., and Speech Machines, Redwood City, Calif., as well as a voice-recognition service bureau from Intellivoice Communications Inc., Atlanta, and Premiere Technologies Inc., Atlanta.
"By establishing this service [bureau], wireless carriers will be able to provide their customers with voice-activated dialing in the short term and other enhanced services in the future without having to make a large, up-front capital investment," says Boland Jones, chairman and CEO of Premiere.
Compaq and Northern Telecom Ltd. (Nortel), Mississauga, Ontario, recently announced their partnership to focus on bringing a voice-activated dialing system to the mobile market that surmounts the difficulties of a "noisy" wireless environment, says Compaq's Ebling. But Compaq is not ignoring the wireline market, either.
"Next year we will be rolling out an advanced intelligent network peripheral capability," he says. "We are just leading with the wireless voice service because that is where our strength in the market is. We will target the wireline side of the market as well with the introduction of capabilities to support the various [Internet protocol, or IP] interfaces in the traditional carrier market."
Although there have been VUI-based wireline service launches by traditional telcos, the service has not been prolific. "Enhanced services take longer to deploy," says Stuart Patterson, president and CEO at ALTech. "They take longer for vendors to integrate into their systems, and it takes longer for telcos to say, 'OK, we're done playing with this. I'm going to deploy it now.'"
Long distance carriers must be cautious about their deployments to guarantee quality of service (QoS). So with actionable platforms just surfacing that meet long distance carriers' needs, many are only considering the technology at this point, says Andre Kuyzk, an analyst for Frost and Sullivan, Mountain View, Calif. Consideration of these new services likely will include a test period before full-fledged services will reach end users, he adds.
Image: Speech Tecnology Revenue Growth Worldwide
Frontier Corp., Rochester, N.Y., completed its test period for the technology in July, launching its SpeedLink voice-activated phone card for businesses. With SpeedLink, customers dial an 800 number and speak their personal identification number (PIN) to access VUI-based services such as voice mail, travel reservations, teleconferencing and standard dialing. The service is not available for residential users, says Randal Simonetti, vice president of communications for Frontier, because the business market presently is the "right niche" for this technology.
Webley Systems Inc., Schaumburg, Ill., however, is bringing speech- recognition technology to subscribers by means of Webley, a voice-activated electronic assistant for the membership-based Webley Network.
For $14.95 a month, plus line charges for basic services, Webley offers voice-activated dialing, conference calling, voice mail and call transfers all with spoken commands.
So Long, DTMF
In its report, "The Telephony Voice User Interface," TMA Associates predicts a hundredfold growth between 1997 and 2003 in revenues for advanced speech technology products and services in telephony "that would not exist except for speech recognition," Meisel says. While Meisel admits he is a little wary of this prediction, he cannot help but believe that the demand for the technology will take off.
"One speech-activated service leads to demands for more features that can be added with a VUI," he says. "A true paradigm shift means that the growth is limited only by the imagination of product and service developers."
These predictions, coupled with the large-scale vendor activity over the past 10 months, point strongly toward the introduction of VUI-based services in the residential wireline market. The fact remains, however, that these are visions that only will meet reality in years to come. Will there come a time when the telephone key pad will go the way of the rotary dial? We'll see.
Jennifer Knapp is news editor for PHONE+ Magazine.
