CT Labs Announces Availability of Speech Recognition Accuracy Test Suite and Results of First-Ever Benchmark Test; Nuance and SpeechWorks Compared for Untuned Speech Recognition Performance.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ROSEVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 2002

CT Labs, the leading independent converged communication and computer telephony product testing services company, today announced the immediate availability of its Speech Recognition Accuracy Benchmark Test Suite capabilities as well as results of the industry's first published speech recognition accuracy test. Designed to test speech recognition performance, the new test suite enables CT Labs to efficiently perform scientific and unbiased accuracy tests on a wide range of speech recognition engines.

In this first-ever test, CT Labs found Nuance 8.0 to be significantly more accurate than OpenSpeech(TM) Recognizer 1.0 from competitor SpeechWorks. CT Labs' accuracy benchmark test found Nuance 8.0 to be the best performer with 92 percent accuracy in quiet (landline and wireless) conditions, and 86 percent accuracy in noisy (wireless and hands-free) environments. The SpeechWorks performance metrics were 73 percent and 63 percent for quiet and noisy environments, respectively. These results represent "out-of-the-box" accuracy figures, meaning that neither system was tuned prior to performing these tests.

"CT Labs is well known for its unbiased and scientific testing methodologies," said Chris Bajorek, president, CT Labs. "The Speech Recognition Accuracy Benchmark Test is a prime example of our core technology testing leadership and capabilities. We see speech recognition as an incredibly important moving-forward technology for the telecom and converged communications industries. We believe this test suite will provide solid metrics for speech recognition technology firms to evaluate their progress in this exciting area."

For this test, a VoiceXML speech application was developed and hosted on speech servers running recent speech recognition engines available from Nuance and SpeechWorks. The Nuance speech recognition engine was tested on a server validated by CT Labs as being "untuned" (and "out of the box") and the SpeechWorks speech recognition engine was run on a server at a well-known application hosting service, also running "untuned." Over 500 callers representing four different calling environments -- landline quiet, wireless (cellular) quiet, wireless noisy, and hands-free wireless noisy -- participated in the test. Each recruit was instructed to call the same call-routing system twice, which blindly routed their first call to either the Nuance or SpeechWorks system. The second call followed immediately and was routed to the other speech recognition system. Approximately 50 percent of the first-time calls were routed to each system. Recruits received ten random company names from a list of 4,000 company names. The speech recognition application prompted the caller to say the same ten company names into both systems for the purposes of testing the recognition engines on the 4,000 company name grammar. Nuance was found to be more accurate in all four calling environments. For a complete copy of the testing report, visit http://www.nuance.com/pdf/ctlabs_report.pdf.

About This Test

CT Labs approached this test commissioned by Nuance Communications, Inc. with the same objectivity that has made it the foremost respected independent test lab in the converged communication industry. CT Labs routinely performs multi-vendor comparative tests for the purpose of evaluating performance in a wide variety of telecom product and core technology areas, including speech recognition, text-to-speech, next-generation PBX, IP telephony, and voice portal products.

About CT Labs

CT Labs is the leading supplier of independent product testing, certification, and analysis services for the converged communications, IP telephony, and computer telephony industries. CT Labs' testing automation specialists not only perform a variety of standard test suites that validate and exercise telecom products, but can also create custom-developed tests for special needs. Testing solutions include core technology testing, including speech recognition and text-to-speech products, as well as telephone and graphical user interface functional, regression, and load / stress tests. CT Labs prides itself on working with cutting edge convergence technology and products. CT Labs' client list includes CommWeb (www.commweb.com) and Communications Convergence Magazine (both of which are part of CMP Media) for whom it conducts multi-vendor product review testing. CT Labs was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Roseville, California. For more information, visit the CT Labs Web site at http://www.ct-labs.com/.