DENVER-Consumer-friendly pervasive telephony technologies were the focus of last week’s Zelos Group’s Pervasive 2003 show here. Directory assistance and speech-recognition technologies, both hot topics in the wireless industry, took center stage.
Converging those themes was TeleCommunication Systems Inc., which has expertise in enhanced 911 services and wireless messaging. The company introduced Xypages, a wireless location-based directory assistance service, at the show.
The service allows an end user to dial 411, along with another two-to-three digit code to access a variety of concierge-type services and find the location of the desired service, his or her own location and directions between the two. With the service, an end user could locate nearby gas stations, restaurants, hotels, Wi-Fi hot spots, Starbucks coffee shops or Borders bookstores.
How it works: Customers dial 411GAS and hear automated responses that their requests have been received and that they can expect text responses soon. Within seconds, the end user receives a text message that (based on TCS’ location technology) pinpoints his or her location and the location of several nearby gas stations. The end user then can select a gas station and get directions to the location.
The application also holds mobile advertising potential, according to Tim Lorello, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of TCS. A consumer choosing between nearby gas stations, for example, might be enticed by a vendor that offers a few cents off each gallon of gas as part of its location listing.
The hosted solution is currently available to carriers. Operators individually will determine which requests the service will respond to, how (numerically) they will be requested and how much the service will cost.
Xypages was developed by TCS in an effort to leverage revenues from the location-technology expertise it had developed through its E911 initiatives. That power of location-based technologies being used to facilitate the implementation of the Federal Communication Commission’s E911 mandates was also demonstrated in last week’s announcement that TruePosition Inc. will provide T-Mobile USA Inc. with its Finder E911 solution for T-Mobile’s national network. Like solutions developed by TCS, the Finder solution ensures the FCC E911 Phase II mandate, which requires wireless carriers to provide location accuracy to 100 meters for 67 percent of calls and 300 meters for 95 percent of calls, is met.
In other speech-recognition news at the show, VoiceXML call automation solution provider BeVocal unleashed its new VoCare Customer Lifecycle Management applications, designed to allow wireless carriers to increase customer satisfaction while lowering costs.
VoCare is a voice automated customer-care suite designed to function like a live customer care call agent and to replace traditional interactive voice response (IVR) systems. The VoCare application suites are targeted at service providers, as well as direct marketing retail enterprises. The suites include more than 25 individual BeVocal applications.
The packaged service provider suites target the areas of customer acquisition, billing and payment, account management, service and repair, and call routing. Within those suites are applications like BeVocal’s VoiceMart, which would allow consumers to call their service providers to sign up for enhanced services like text messaging via a voice-activated interface, and a handset activator application that would allow a wireless customer to purchase a handset and activate it via a voice-enabled interface after the point of sale.
The hosted solution, according to Steve Tran, BeVocal co-founder and vice president of marketing, assists carriers in reducing costs, increasing revenues and improving customer service levels while eliminating expenses associated with traditional call automation systems, like IVR.
Microsoft and IBM also both rolled out multimodal speech development tool kits, and SandCherry released a new speech-based application.
