Wildfire Communications Inc. announced United Kingdom operator Orange plc has begun a targeted
deployment of Wildfire’s network voice-activated virtual assistant.
Orange said the initial deployment will involve
several thousand customers who represent different age, gender and accent demographic groups, on which the company
plans to focus when it offers Wildfire as a no-cost option to its 2 million users later this year.
“This is beyond
a trial,” said Rich Miner, vice president and chief technology officer at Wildfire. He said he expected the larger
deployment to occur soon and include upward of 10,000 users.
While the Network Wildfire system is capable of
many services, Orange said it first will offer the messaging and contact-list capabilities to users. Miner said he hopes
Orange will include other services over time.
The system in use is different than those deployed to date in that the
personal assistant features a British personality and accent, and is optimized to understand British accents.
Because
Wildfire developed and owns the voice-recognition technology behind the system, Miner said it was a relatively simple
matter to adapt it to British speech patterns.
Additionally, it has two other language interfaces for other foreign
markets, as Wildfire is being tested by unnamed carriers in the United Kingdom, France and Italy.
Orange is the
third carrier to deploy the product. The first to do so was Bell Mobility in Canada; then Pacific Bell Wireless in
California.
“We’re actually fairly excited about the opportunities here in Europe,” Miner said.
“We’ve found the European market to be more mature from the wireless standpoint, or more stable
anyway.”
He pointed out that Europe benefits from as many as six carriers competing in some markets and a
common transmission standard in Global System for Mobile communications. However, European carriers haven’t
been as focused on advanced services as those in the United States.
“The combination of these dynamics have
carriers over here receptive to Wildfire,” Miner said, speaking from Paris.
“It is because of carriers like
Orange that we’re making sure our service can handle hundreds of thousands of users on a single system and scale up
even beyond that,” he continued. “They’re pushing us very aggressively.”
Orange has been testing
the system since February 1997. The company said its goal is to provide a “phone book in the sky” that can
offer a single speech-activated interface covering voice mail, fax and other data services.
The “ultimate goal is
to market a handset with no keypad at all,” said Hans Snook, managing director at Orange.
