Natural MicroSystems' Voice-Activated Services Platform in Tellme's Carrier-Grade Voice Application Network.

Business/Technology Editors

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 2001

Premier Provider of Voice and Speech-Enabled Services Teams With NMS

for Award-Winning Telephony Technology

Natural MicroSystems (NASDAQ: NMSS), the technology leader enabling a new era of communications, today announced that Tellme Networks(TM), Inc. is deploying NMS' IP telephony platform for voice-activated phone services in the company's carrier-grade Voice Application Network.

A pioneer in speech-driven applications and the creator of a premier Voice Application Network, Tellme specializes in helping businesses build and run applications on its carrier-grade VoiceXML network, which is capable of answering hundreds of millions of calls annually. Sample business applications include the ability to outsource traditional IVR and add deep Internet integration and voice navigation to improve how calls to 1-800 numbers and call centers are handled. In addition, Tellme lets businesses promote their applications to millions of people through their own phone number or by buying placement in the Tellme(SM) directory at 1-800-555-TELL. Tellme selected NMS' hardware and software integrated with the Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) speech recognition engine.

NMS provides exceptional scalability and price performance leadership; a unified development environment that encompasses key speech and telephony capabilities; support for open standards that speed deployment; and demonstrated robustness in voice-activated applications. Tellme plans to install the NMS platform within its application servers during the continuing buildout of the Tellme Voice Application Network.

Integrating NMS' open standards based IP telephony platform hardware and software provides Tellme further reliability and scalability toward achieving its vision of using the Internet to fundamentally improve how people place phone calls and how businesses answer those calls.

Said Bob Schechter, chairman and CEO of NMS, "Natural MicroSystems and Tellme have begun working together at a promising time. This past year network-based voice services, led by voice portals, caught the ear of millions of people who were introduced to their potential for the first time. By selecting our integrated platform, Tellme gains an all-in-one solution with powerful speech recognition, media processing and telephony capabilities that are vitally necessary to advance businesses' use of voice-activated applications."

Meeting the Demand for Voice-Activated Services

"This collaboration is an inspired pairing: Tellme and Natural MicroSystems are two of the industry's prime movers getting voice-driven applications out of the lab and into networks in the real world," said Mark Winther, group vice president of IDC's Worldwide Telecommunications research. "Separately, each company has been at the vanguard in commercial deployments of voice-activated services. Each was also early to appreciate how a speech interface adds convenience and reach to the business value of Web talk." The market research firm IDC forecasts that service provider revenues for "Web talk" -- or live voice applications that leverage the Internet -- will surge at a compound annual growth rate of 200 percent from $208 million in 2000 to $16.5 billion by year-end 2004.

NMS' integrated platform is designed to drive rapid development and deployment of highly scalable voice-driven Web applications, voice portal solutions and voice-enabled e-commerce solutions. The platform combines NMS' award-winning AG 4000(TM) media processing platform, the Natural Access(TM) development environment and speech recognition software from Nuance, a leader in voice interface software. In a cost-effective single-board solution, the integrated NMS platform gives service providers and solution developers access to industry-leading capabilities they need to implement, run and expand voice-driven applications:

-- Unmatched high density. The platform supports a maximum of 120 ports in a
single-board solution for lower development cost and greater scalability.

-- Integrated telephony and speech API. Integrated with the Nuance speech
engine at the application program interface (API) level, this speeds
implementation time because a single API affords access to speech as well as
telephony capabilities.

-- Industry's only simultaneous play and record or full-duplex capability for
barge-in. Barge-in enables callers to interrupt prompts by saying commands at
any time, instead of waiting to hear complete menus. Barge-in can be used on
all channels of the board without reducing the number of ports available to
applications.

-- On-board software-based echo cancellation. Robust on-board echo cancellation
further enhances sound quality and increases user satisfaction with
voice-enabled services.

About Natural MicroSystems

Natural MicroSystems (NASDAQ: NMSS) is the technology leader making it possible for the world's top networking and communication equipment suppliers to create and accelerate communications infrastructure and services. The Framingham, MA company designs, develops and supplies network-quality hardware and software components and provides design and customization services that are enabling a new era of communications.

Deployed in more than 65 countries, NMS' products and technologies are at the foundation of today's high-value communications systems, including network-based enhanced service platforms, media and access gateways, media servers, voice portals, web-enabled call centers, unified messaging platforms and wireless networks. NMS has a long history of technology innovations that advance the rapid growth of the communications industry worldwide, including breakthroughs such as the first complete open IP gateway, the first complete open packet media server and leadership in bringing open, scalable CompactPCI to the telecommunications industry. More information about NMS is available at http://www.nmss.com.

Natural MicroSystems, AG 4000 and Natural Access are trademarks of Natural MicroSystems Corporation. Tellme and Tellme Networks are trademarks of Tellme Networks, Inc. All other product or corporate references are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.