Voice ASP consortium expands wireless telephony as a medium - The mobile voice portal as a fully managed service for mobile telephone companies and other mobile service and content providers
Cologne and Düsseldorf, March 10, 2004: On March 1, T-Mobile launched the first voice-driven infotainment portal for cell phone users in Germany in the form of T-Mobile 2300 InfoTalk. The Voice ASP consortium, jointly run by net mobile AG and VoiceObjects AG, realized this service for T-Mobile Germany's customers. The InfoTalk voice portal sets new standards for user comfort while for the first time combining playback of real voice recordings with appropriate background noises together with SMS and MMS messaging services. The technical backbone for developing and operating this exceptionally high-quality voice application is provided by the server-based voice application management system (VAMS) of VoiceObjects AG: VoiceObjects Factory. The software contains an operating environment and an integrated development environment (IDE). In addition, VoiceObjects AG functions also as the general contractor for the project. Experts at VoiceObjects designed the user interface and implemented the voice applications. Germany's leading provider for entertainment solutions, net mobile AG, is responsible for hosting, 24/7 support, and billing for the various applications in the consortium through its fully managed services. All accounts with content providers and license holders are settled through net mobile AG, too. Providers of radio reports such as the leading German news agency dpa (Deutsche Presseagentur) provide up-to-the-minute content for the portal. For drivers, T-Mobile Traffic offers individualized information on the current road and traffic conditions on German motorways.
Voice Application Service Providing
The ASP consortium has set its goal as establishing, operating, and marketing voice-based telephone services (including voice portals) for third parties. The realization of the infotainment voice portal for T-Mobile is the initial success for this business model. The general service of "voice application service providing" is, however, still available for wireless providers and other companies seeking to market voice-driven products and services to mobile telephone customers (e.g. v-commerce). VoiceObjects and net mobile are currently also cooperating on a voice portal for selling cell phone ring tones.
"Our voice portal InfoTalk sets a new standard in terms of quality and content for voice-supported infotainment services. VoiceObjects has managed to set up the portal very quickly while at the same time achieving a degree of user friendliness and service variety as yet unmatched in the rest of the industry. This allows us to offer our customers an easy-to-use and inspiring value-added service," says Martin Knauer, Head of Marketing for T-Mobile GmbH in Germany.
"We are proud to note that our innovative concept of voice application management is now catching hold on the wireless telephone market. This is doing a lot to advance voice technologies as a solution for telephone services. Today it is possible to design voice applications in a way that makes them truly acceptable to all callers. Our voice application server, with its integrated development environment, has built the technical foundation for a high level of user comfort and an individualized manner of addressing customers as parts of a target group. This in turn makes it possible to operate diverse and always current services economically, even with large call volumes," explains Karl-Heinz Land, CEO of VoiceObjects AG. "I am convinced that this model of voice application service providing will help voice portals to achieve a breakthrough on the market. Instead of investing in the design and operation of a voice portal, companies can buy all the processes related to voice applications – from development to hosting and from user administration to billing – as a single service. That's not only more economical, but it also produces much better results. Companies can then focus on their core competencies and leave this job to the real experts, who can offer optimal infrastructure along with their well founded know-how – and all this within the individually tailored service levels," says Theodor Niehues, CEO of net mobile AG.
