Octel Announces First Deployments of OcteLink Messaging Service, Linking Voice Mail Systems; Bell Canada and Inland Steel Begin Connecting Disparate Voice Mail Systems to Provide Global Voice Message Exchange.MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 23, 1996--Bell Canada, the largest of Canada's 11 telephone companies, and Inland Steel Company The Inland Steel Company was a U.S. steel company active in 1893-1998. Its history as an independent firm thus spanned much of the 20th century. It was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois at the landmark Inland Steel Building. and its affiliates, a U.S.-based materials management Materials management is the branch of logistics that deals with the tangible components of a supply chain. Specifically, this covers the acquisition of spare parts and replacements, quality control of purchasing and ordering such parts, and the standards involved in ordering, , logistics, and technical services entity, recently finalized separate service agreements for OcteLink messaging services from Octel Communications Corporation (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :OCTL OCTL Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory OCTL Oil Country Tubular Limited (Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India) OCTL One-Channel-To-Line ), the world's leading provider of voice and fax messaging products and services. These agreements will provide voice messaging Using voice mail as an alternative to electronic mail, in which voice messages are intentionally recorded, not because the recipient was not available. capabilities across various voice mail platforms, expanding networks within Inland Steel's business community and, separately, in a limited time trial within Bell Canada's customer community. Announced in July, OcteLink is a network service designed to transport messages to and from any voice mail system, regardless of protocol, system size, or geographic location, as easily as users today send messages within their own companies. In addition to these new contracts, OcteLink has been deployed at a major U.S. financial institution and a consumer products company. "These agreements are the latest in a series of negotiations currently underway to bring the OcteLink technology to service providers and corporations worldwide," said Charles Levine, senior vice president, Octel Network Services. "They demonstrate the viability and increasingly strategic role of OcteLink as an enabling technology with the potential to provide true global voice message exchange so that people everywhere can use the most ubiquitous communication device - the telephone - to send and receive voice messages quickly, easily, and reliably." Bell Canada Bell Canada Enterprises (TSX: BCE, NYSE: BCE), legally BCE Inc., is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Through its subsidiaries including Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for Pilot First Step in Nationwide Deployment In December, Bell Canada began a limited time trial - the first step in finalizing a future service agreement to provide OcteLink messaging to Bell Canada customers nationwide. This pilot program builds on the initial July 1995 agreement between Octel and Stentor Stentor Greek herald with voice of 50 men. [Gk. Myth.: Espy, 39] See : Loudness , an alliance of Canada's major telephone companies. The OcteLink services trial involves two Bell Canada customers. One customer, for instance, will use the OcteLink network to connect employees at its headquarters, who rely on an internal voice messaging system, with employees in regional sales offices, who rely on service provider-based messaging systems. OcteLink will allow all of these employees to send and receive voice messages - a capability that previously wasn't possible. "OcteLink is an important part of our strategy to connect public and private voice mail systems in order to provide our customers with a variety of enhanced services and communications capabilities," said Brian Halverson, director, market management, Bell Canada. "These trials will allow us to work cooperatively with Octel to fine tune deployment, provisioning, billing, and other start-up issues." OcteLink Connects Inland Steel to Key Subsidiary Octel has also signed an OcteLink service agreement with Inland Steel Company, a business of Inland Steel Industry, Inc. and its affiliates. The $4.5-billion, Chicago-based company uses an Octel Sierra voice messaging system, managed by Octel Network Services, to provide telephone answering, two-way voice messaging, fax mailbox A simulated mailbox in the computer that holds e-mail messages. Mailboxes are stored on disk as a file of messages, a database of messages or as an individual file for each message. The standard mailboxes are usually In, Out, Trash and Junk (Spam). service, and pager outcall out·call n. A visit by a professional person to a client or patient's home; a house call. Verb 1. outcall - make a higher bid than (the previous bid or player); in a card game notification service, to approximately 2,800 employees. The agreement will allow Inland Steel Company to conduct a pilot that will link its corporate system to an AT&T Intuity system located at Joseph T. Ryerson & Son, Chicago, a key subsidiary of Inland Steel Industries, Inc. Once connected via OcteLink, Inland Steel Company and Ryerson employees at these two locations will be able to send individual and group voice messages to both systems as easily as they now message internally. "Voice messaging is an important, business-critical capability at Inland Steel," said H. William Howard, vice president of information technology, Inland Steel. "Our executive team often uses two-way messaging to communicate sensitive or strategic information. The ability to include Ryerson management in broadcast messages of this type is extremely appealing. Ultimately, we would like to link up with our customers and distributors to enhance communication inside and outside of our enterprise and to foster the creation of a work environment based on virtual teams." About OcteLink OcteLink is designed to link commercial, residential and institutional customers worldwide. OcteLink consists of messaging hubs (or "voice post offices") that connect disparate voice processing The computerized handling of voice, which includes voice store and forward, voice response, voice recognition and text to speech technologies. systems and ensure that every message is efficiently routed to its destination. The hubs act as multimedia gateways - accepting voice and fax - with delivery based on the telephone (hard-wired or cellular). Future delivery vehicles will include personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs), or fax machines; message transport will include e-mail and multimedia. The first hubs are located in Dallas and Chicago. Additional OcteLink hubs will be placed in Canada and elsewhere in the U.S., as well as in countries throughout Europe, the Pacific Rim Pacific Rim, term used to describe the nations bordering the Pacific Ocean and the island countries situated in it. In the post–World War II era, the Pacific Rim has become an increasingly important and interconnected economic region. , South America South America, fourth largest continent (1991 est. pop. 299,150,000), c.6,880,000 sq mi (17,819,000 sq km), the southern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , and the Middle East as demand requires. About Octel Communications Corporation Octel Communications is the voice messaging company. Its worldwide leadership extends to over 40 countries and includes more than 30,000,000 users of Octel voice mail. Octel's products are bought and used by businesses of all sizes, governments, educational institutions, telephone companies and cellular service providers. Through Octel Network Services, the company is the world's largest outsourcer of voice mail providing a wide range of outsourcing services to phone companies and businesses. Founded in 1982, the company is headquartered in Milpitas, California Milpitas (IPA pronunciation: mɪlpitʌs; inhabitants are called 'Milpitans') is a city in Santa Clara County, California. It is located with San Jose to its south and Fremont to its north, at the eastern end of Highway 237 and generally between Interstate freeways 680 and . The company has development centers in California, Texas, England, France, and Israel, and major operations centers in California and Texas. Additional information is available at http://www.octel.com. CONTACT: Octel Communications Corporation Greg Klaben, 408/324-6571 (Investor Relations Investor relations The process by which the corporation communicates with its investors. ) gregory.klaben@octel.com Stuart McFaul, 408/324-3245 (Public Relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most ) stuart.mcfaul@octel.com or Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. Lou Bertin, 202/828-8844 lbertin@aol.com |
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