The next round in the fight to popularize voice paging has begun, this time in Latin America, as Mexican paging operator RadioFlash became the first carrier to launch a voice paging service over a FLEX network using speech compression technology from OmniVoice Technologies Inc.
OmniVoice’s VoiceOver platform is a messaging solution designed to store and send compressed voice messages across existing FLEX networks to a specially designed pager that can play voice messages as well as display text and numeric content.
The company is a joint venture between The National Dispatch Center Inc. of San Diego and Belgium-based Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V., which exclusively licenses the low-bit-rate compression technology to OmniVoice.
Callers who want to page a VoiceOver customer merely dial the subscriber’s pager number and choose among leaving a voice, alphanumeric or numeric message when prompted. Alphanumeric or numeric messages are transmitted traditionally. Voice messages are stored on OmniVoice’s Voice Terminal-which resides between the public switched telephone network and the paging switch-where they are compressed and coded to fool the network into thinking it’s an alphanumeric message.
The compressed message then is transmitted over the carrier’s network to the pager, which decompresses it and plays it to the user in the caller’s own voice.
The pager, manufactured by Oi Electronics Corp., can store and play up to 99 20-second voice messages. Longer messages will be cut off, but can be retrieved from a phone, similar to voice mail. Previously known as the 3N1, OmniVoice is marketing the device as the SureVoice in Latin America.
RadioFlash began offering the service, branded as AudioBeep, Aug. 16.
Kathleen Layton, president and chief executive officer of OmniVoice, said the company chose to introduce its product in the Latin American market because of the predominance of alphanumeric messaging there.
“We targeted Latin America,” she said. “In our assessment of the United States, we found there was a lot of focus on two-way and delays in two-way. Latin America is a market crying for voice messaging for several reasons. First, the population is very responsive to this. Secondly, it’s a very compelling sale to carriers. Because they don’t do numeric paging, everything is alphanumeric and relies on operator-assisted dispatch, which is expensive.”
She said she expects the company will see further launches in both Latin America and Asia before extending into the U.S. market, not expected until later next year. In the United States, carriers Arch Communications Group Inc. and TSR Wireless L.L.C. are testing the platform.
Paging infrastructure provider Glenayre Technologies Inc. offers the VoiceOver platform integrated with its GL3000 switch. Carriers either can buy the integrated Glenayre solution, as RadioFlash did, or deploy it on a Windows NT platform if using a CT solution, with a few minor modifications.
OmniVoice receives licensing fees for the platform, as well as a per-user royalty fee.
The Mexican launch of the technology marks yet another attempt to cash in on the voice paging market, which to date has been defined by failed launches and bankruptcy.
Paging Network Inc. made the first attempt at the voice paging market with its VoiceNow service, building out a network specially designed for voice paging based on InFLEXion technology from Motorola Inc. After signing on a parsley 2,000 subscribers, PageNet dropped the program, recently writing off the remaining vestiges of the failed effort.
Then Conxus Communications Inc. gave it a shot, also using a dedicated InFLEXion voice paging network. While it succeeded in signing on many more customers through a more focused and aggressive marketing plan, the company still found itself bankrupt after the first quarter this year.
But analysts and others in the voice paging game, like ReadyCom Inc., insist the problem with these attempts was not that there isn’t a market for voice paging, but merely the prohibitive cost of entry carried by building out an InFLEXion network.
The capital expenditures needed to build out a new network are large and not easy to recoup. But OmniVoice believes its VoiceOver technology transcends that obstacle since it works on existing networks.
“VoiceOver offers a carrier a learning path for building a voice messaging business without incurring the extensive infrastructure buildout cost of InFLEXion,” read a report from the Yankee Group, written when OmniVoice first introduced its product last year. “VoiceOver equips standard paging networks with the capability to provide value-added and increased average revenue per unit product mixes to the end customers.”
But because the OmniVoice solution is an add-on to existing networks, Layton said timing is another concern when addressing voice paging in the U.S. market.
“We have a very practical solution for the United States,” she said, “but the timing has to be right. The consumers are ready, but all parties in the chain have to be ready, and that includes carriers.”
Layton said U.S. carriers are still focused on their two-way strategies, getting ReFLEX 25 networks running and adding full interactive two-way services to them, a process so far held up by delays in pagers for the network and by network optimization issues.
Once carriers launch two-way services and get comfortable operating these networks, they may begin to think about adding a voice option, she said.
