Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs and Sound Advantage to Incorporate Advanced Speech Recognition in Sound Advantage Products.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 9, 2001

Speech Engine to Improve Accuracy, Recognition Speed

and Language Capabilities

Sound Advantage and Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU) today announced the formation of a technology alliance. Under the Agreement, Lucent will receive Sound Advantage warrants.

Researchers from Sound Advantage and Lucent's Bell Labs will work together to incorporate a next-generation speech recognition engine into the Sound Advantage line of unified messaging systems.

The Sound Advantage products serve the wireless and telephony markets, from the small-office, home-office (SOHO) level to the enterprise and telephony carrier levels.

Three-Year Licensing and Joint Development Agreement

The companies have signed a three-year licensing and joint development agreement under which they will incorporate the Lucent Automatic Speech Recognition (LASR) engine, developed by Bell Labs, into the next version of SANDi(TM) (Sound Advantage Natural Dialog Interface), to be known as SANDi 2.1. SANDi has won 20 industry awards in 24 months, and it has been widely recognized for its friendly user interface.

"Bell Labs has agreed to work with Sound Advantage's development team to integrate our latest research results into the new LASR speech recognition engine," said Sid Ahuja, vice president of Bell Labs' Multimedia Communications Research laboratory. "Bell Labs' new, more accurate speech-recognition engine will provide faster recognition and extended language capabilities. It will serve a broad range of wireless and telephony users."

"Sound Advantage's speech products should see an improvement in performance and customer satisfaction from the use of Bell Labs technology," said Michael D. Metcalf, president of Sound Advantage. "Bell Labs has made some of the most significant breakthroughs in advanced speech technology. It has helped make reliable speech recognition over the phone a reality."

LASR Engine to Drive SANDi 2.1

The first step in the three-year agreement calls for the companies to integrate the new-generation LASR engine into SANDi 2.1.

"We have already taken the first steps to incorporate the new LASR engine into a beta version of SANDi 2.1, which will serve the carrier and enterprise markets," said Peter Dingus, vice president of research and development at Sound Advantage. "LASR will improve accuracy, speed and grammar capabilities, resulting in the ability to recognize speech, even in very noisy environments. Lucent's text-to-speech engine will improve the conversational nature of SANDi."

Integration of the new LASR engine into the Sound Advantage product line will make SANDi-based services much easier for customers to use. The new engine enhances performance on cell phones in noisy environments, such as in a moving car. LASR also has special models for single-syllable words such as "yes," "no," "help," "quit," etc. These words greatly enhance voice navigation, but are difficult for some voice-recognition systems to recognize.

The new line of Sound Advantage products using SANDi 2.1 with LASR will have the ability to recognize key words in more natural arbitrary phrases, freeing the user from having to remember specific phrases. LASR will also be re-engineered for faster performance and incorporate larger vocabulary sets.

Future Sound Advantage-Bell Labs development projects may include enhancing the system's speaker verification capabilities and extending the language capability to French (Canadian and Continental), Australian English, Italian, German, Spanish (Latin and Continental), Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese.

About Sound Advantage

Established in 1997, Sound Advantage is a leading developer of voice-user interface technology for communication, messaging and content. The company's core product is SANDi (Sound Advantage Natural Dialog Interface). The SANDi family of products includes advanced call processing solutions to speech-enable common office technology such as PBX, voice mail, fax, e-mail and CRM, with solutions available for small, midsize and large businesses. Enterprise and network solutions support from 3,000 to millions of users per system.

Having earned a record-breaking 20 top industry awards within 24 months of its initial release, SANDi(TM) has become America's Favorite Voice Interface(TM). For additional information, contact Sound Advantage at 5 Park Plaza, 7th Floor, Irvine, Calif. 92614. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. Web site: www.soundadvantage.com.

About Bell Labs

With 30,000 employees in 30 countries, Bell Labs is the world's largest R&D organization dedicated to communications and the leading source of new communications technologies. Bell Labs has generated more than 28,000 patents since 1925 and has played a pivotal role in inventing or perfecting key communications technologies, including transistors; digital networking and signal processing; lasers and fiber-optic communications systems; communications satellites; cellular telephony; electronic switching of calls; touch-tone dialing; and modems.

Bell Labs scientists have received six Nobel Prizes in Physics, nine U.S. Medals of Science and six U.S. Medals of Technology. For more information about Bell Labs, visit its Web site at www.bell-labs.com.

About Lucent Technologies

Lucent Technologies, with headquarters in Murray Hill, N.J., designs and delivers the systems, software and services for next-generation communications networks for service providers and enterprises. Backed by the research and development of Bell Labs, Lucent focuses on high-growth areas such as broadband and mobile Internet infrastructure; communications software; Web-based enterprise solutions that link private and public networks; and professional network design and consulting services.

For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit its Web site at www.lucent.com.