NEW YORK-Nuance of Menlo Park, Calif., announced Oct. 5 it is in preliminary testing stages with 25 telecommunications and Internet companies for Voyager, its new speech interface software.
Company officials said they see Voyager, which uses open standards, as heralding the arrival of the “Voice Web,” the Internet navigated by vocal instead of typed commands.
“The convergence of voice and the Web compares to the introduction of touch-tone (dialing) in the 1970s,” said Ronald Croen, Nuance’s president and chief executive officer.
Asked the difference between Voyager and Wildfire Communications Inc.’s virtual personal assistant, another voice-activated dialing product, Croen responded, “Wildfire is a packaged service with a set of applications. Voyager is a framework for voice user interfaces. We license the server software and potentially the browser software to carriers and enterprise customers.”
Kathy Frostad, director of telecommunications product marketing for Nuance, said the company has focused substantial research and development efforts on wireless telecommunications. Voyager works over Global System for Mobile communications, Code Division Multiple Access and Time Division Multiple Access air interfaces, she said.
Frostad added that Nuance has invested more than 1,000 hours of research and development toward making Voyager function properly in a hands-free wireless calling environment. In doing so, the company is responding to dialing-while-driving prohibitions instituted by several countries, including Israel and the United Kingdom, she said.
At least two dozen companies are working with Nuance to develop Voyager’s potential for natural language, voice-driven Internet-related services, Croen said. In the area of unified messaging, these include Authentix Network Inc., BellSouth Mobility and InTouch Systems. Aspect Telecommunications, Motorola Inc. and Telstra Corp. are working on voice-activated dialing.
Alltel Corp., Bell Atlantic Mobility, Deutsche Telekom and Telia Mobile are among the companies joining forces with Nuance to advance voice portal services that deliver information on demand. Bell Atlantic Corp. and Telia Telecom are included in the company ranks investigating Voyager’s application for auto attendants and corporate dialers.
British Telecommunications plc, Cap Gemini Telecom and Media and Periphonics Corp. are several of Nuance’s development partners working on customer care uses for Voyager.
“An early version will be available to our partners in November, and several companies expect to trial it early next year,” Croen said.
Nuance expects to beta test Voyager by spring and to produce it commercially by summer. Company officials said they are not ready yet to release pricing information for Voyager and a related new product, V-Builder, which Nuance expects to be generally available by the end of next year.
V-Builder is a tool that enables Web site developers, even those without speech recognition or telephony skills, to build voice interfaces to their Internet sites.
“It is an open source tool, and it can run on any operating system or telephony system,” said John Shea, director of product marketing for V-Builder.
Nuance expects to beta test V-Builder in January, and will make it available free of charge to its development partners.
