Venezuela's First, Fixed-Line Voice Portal for Residential Customers, Powered by Merlin Telecom and SpeechWorks International.Business/Technology Editors MIAMI Miami, cities, United States Miami (mīăm`ē, –ə). 1 City (1990 pop. 358,548), seat of Dade co., SE Fla., on Biscayne Bay at the mouth of the Miami River; inc. 1896. and BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 2001 CANTV's "Virtual Home" Provides Free Access to Information, Entertainment and Educational Services Merlin Telecom, a company dedicated to the development of voice portals in Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. and SpeechWorks International, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPWX SPWX Speechworks (stock symbol) ), a global leader in speech recognition and text-to-speech (TTS (1) See text-to-speech. (2) (Transaction Tracking System) Software that monitors a transaction until completion. In the event of a hardware or software failure, it ensures that the database is brought back to its former state before the attempt to ) technologies and services, today announced that they have provided the speech recognition and voice portal technology for "Virtual Home," the first, fixed-line voice portal for Venezuela's telephone company, CANTV CANTV Compañía Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela (Compania Anonima Nacional de Telefonos de Venezuela), a Verizon subsidiary. The Virtual Home service is available now to three million CANTV users in Caracas, Venezuela and will be available to nine million users throughout Venezuela by the end of the year. Virtual Home is an enhanced services offering for CANTV's customers and their families. By dialing, 0-500-1230500 (in Venezuela only), callers can engage with the Virtual Home and are prompted to use Spanish voice commands to access information such as their telephone bill cooking recipes, and participate in discussion forums on current news and general interest subjects. The speech-activated service also provides interactive stories where, using simple voice commands, children can play a role in the story's plot. There is no monthly service charge for callers, just the cost of a local call. In the coming months, CANTV plans to expand the speech-activated services to include interactive games, chat rooms, entertainment listings, email and an application to consult reference material, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries. Callers can also leave voice messages in the "comments in-box" suggesting additional offerings to the speech service. Future enhancements will also enable callers to make purchases online with payment through a credit card or directly through their bank. "We relied on Merlin Telecom and SpeechWorks to deliver this speech system quickly and we and our many callers are very impressed with the outcome," said Ramon Ramirez, CANTV General Manager for Residential Services. "We are dedicated to bringing additional services to enhance the every day lives of families in Venezuela. Now, using the Virtual Home voice portal, our customers can access information and interact with its many services in a simple and natural way." "Less than five percent of households in Latin America have access to the Internet," said Alejandro Eliaschev, Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. at Merlin Telecom. "Voice portals and voice portal services offer a natural interface to access information from the Internet, simply by using a phone." Merlin Telecom has vast experience in developing, implementing and managing voice solutions, having launched the first voice portal in Latin America in April 2000 for CANTV's mobile subsidiary Movilnet. The company has also deployed voice portal systems for BellSouth in Chile and CODETEL (subsidiary of Verizon) in the Dominican Republic Dominican Republic (dəmĭn`ĭkən), republic (2005 est. pop. 8,950,000), 18,700 sq mi (48,442 sq km), West Indies, on the eastern two thirds of the island of Hispaniola. The capital and largest city is Santo Domingo. . "We're pleased to partner with Merlin Telecom to deliver this interactive voice portal to families in Venezuela," said Howard Gross, vice president and general manager of International at SpeechWorks. "While our speech solutions deliver bottom-line results for businesses, the Virtual Home voice portal illustrates how they can also play an interactive role in enriching everyday lives for people around the world." SpeechWorks has provided the speech interface for a number of popular voice portals such as AOLbyPhone, E-Plus in Germany, HeyAnita, Korea Telecom KT (formerly, Korea Telecom, Korean: 한국통신, NYSE: KT) is South Korea's top integrated wired/wireless telecommunication service provider. KT has been Korea's leader in the development of the information & communications business for the last 25 years and Singapore Telecom. CANTV's Virtual Home runs on NMS See NetWare Management System. Communications' speech processing Speech processing is the study of speech signals and the processing methods of these signals. The signals are usually processed in a digital representation whereby speech processing can be seen as the intersection of digital signal processing and natural language processing. hardware (Nasdaq: NMSS NMSS National Multiple Sclerosis Society NMSS Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards NMSS New Model Special Schools NMSS Network Management Support Services ). NMS is a partner of SpeechWorks. The Kelsey Group projects that worldwide spending and revenues from voice portal and voice applications will reach $41 billion by 2005. About CANTV CANTV is a full service telecommunications provider in Venezuela with 2.6 million access lines in service, 1.9 million cellular subscribers and 303 thousand Internet users as of June 30, 2001. CANTV was privatized in December 1991 when VenWorld Telecom, C.A., a consortium led by GTE GTE General Telephone & Electronics GTE Génie Thermique et Énergie (French) GTE Gas Turbine Engine GTE Global Tropospheric Experiment GTE Geothermal Energy GTE Gas Turbine Efficiency plc (Sweden & USA) Corporation (currently Verizon Communications
Verizon Communications, Inc. Inc.), originally acquired 40% of CANTV's equity share capital, as well as operating control, from the Venezuelan Government. For more information visit www.cantv.com.ve. About Merlin Telecom Merlin Telecom designs, develops and deploys technology that provides device-independent access to high demand content and service. It introduced in April, 2000 the first voice portal in Latin America for wireless telephony telephony without wires, usually employing electric waves of high frequency emitted from an oscillator or generator, as in wireless telegraphy. A telephone transmitter causes fluctuations in these waves, it being the fluctuations only which affect the receiver. See also: Wireless and is expanding its offerings to fixed and wireless lines throughout the region. Merlin Telecom's voice enabled solutions are presented under the Hipervoz TM product line. Hipervoz comprises products and services that include voice access to Internet content, e-mail, interactive entertainment, news, e-commerce, interpersonal and corporate communications Corporate communications is the process of facilitating information and knowledge exchanges with internal and key external groups and individuals that have a direct relationship with an enterprise. , management and productivity tools. The company, with offices in Miami, Caracas, Buenos Aires, and Santiago, has agreements with BellSouth and Verizon to deploy its system in Latin America. For more information, visit www.merlin-telecom.com About SpeechWorks Through the power of SpeechWorks(R) technologies, the human voice is all a caller needs to access instant information and conduct transactions from any landline or wireless phone. Around the world, customer service innovators such as America Online, Continental Airlines, E-Plus, Korean Telecom and Singapore Telecom are realizing returns on SpeechWorks applications that consistently delight and serve customers 24 hours a day. With over 100 partners, SpeechWorks (Nasdaq: SPWX) delivers natural language speech recognition, speaker verification and text-to-speech (TTS) solutions to leading corporations, telecommunications providers and government organizations worldwide. For a description of our products, services and unique customer programs such as the SpeechWorks Here(TM) Guarantee call 617.428.4444 or visit www.speechworks.com. SpeechWorks and SpeechWorks Here are trademarks or registered trademarks of SpeechWorks International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
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