The next round in the fight to popularize voice paging has begun, this time in Latin America. Mexican paging operator RadioFlash this year became the first carrier to launch a voice paging service over a FLEX network using speech compression technology from OmniVoice Technologies.
RadioFlash began offering the service, branded AudioBeep, the first week of September.
Although the paging operator had not released initial subscriber figures as of late October, RadioFlash General Manager Alberto Bitar said he’s “already seen several people walking in the street and in restaurants with the (voice) pager.”
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.
OmniVoice is a joint venture between U.S.-based The National Dispatch Center and Belgium-based Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, which exclusively licenses the low-bit-rate compression technology to OmniVoice.
Callers who want to page a VoiceOver customer dial the subscriber’s pager number and leave either 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 is then 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 used for the service, manufactured by Mitsubishi affiliate Oi Electric, 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. OmniVoice is marketing the device, previously known as the 3N1, as the SureVoice in Latin America.
In late September, OmniVoice announced Korean manufacturer Wide Telecom also will begin producing a voice pager using its VoiceOver technology.
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 region’s predominance of alphanumeric messaging.
“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.”
