You're driving on the freeway and need to call your new office manager to make sure he turns on the alarm before he leaves. You can't remember the number, but luckily, you've programmed his name in your new voice-activated cell phone. You call out "dial Skyler Van Zandt," and the phone balks. You're back to a dial tone. And you try again. Still no luck. And again....
Early users and developers of voice-activated cell phones can attest that the technology has a ways to go before it's ready for prime time. A big part of the problem is that the systems are simply not easy enough to use: To input a telephone number, you often have to repeat the person's name several times verbally and enter it several times manually. And despite its relatively low cost (as low as US$4.95) most cellular phone customers haven't signed up for voice-activated service since it was first offered commercially in 1995.
"Most people don't want to hassle with it," says Jackie Fenn, vice president and research director of advanced technologies at the consulting company the Gartner Group.
But the voice-technology industry is refining its technology and expects the service to become a booming market within the next few years. Voice-processing technology is increasingly finding a place in offices around the United States and Europe. Interactive voice-response systems from Lucent, Bright, and other phone companies are answering calls every second of every business day at major corporations, routing callers to their proper destinations. "There are various levels of voice-activated technology that we can encounter every day," says Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a research firm. "Customers are starting to get used to the technology."
Cambridge, England-based Vocalis, a voice-technology and call-processing company, recently announced that its Speechtel platform has been fully certified by Ericsson Mobile Radio Systems to work with the Ericsson digital cellular network - already in use in more than 100 systems throughout the world. Due to Ericsson's preeminent position as a provider of most of the world's networks for cellular telephone operators, observers are speculating that cellular-phone-based voice-activated systems may start to make some waves in the next year or two.
"We've been working with Ericsson for the last 18 months or so now, and the reason for that alliance - which is a global alliance - is that they need a certain amount of functionality into their networks," says Nathan Cocozza, national sales manager for Vocalis. "They took a load of speech-recognition vendors and tested their algorithms to decide which vendor they wanted to tie up with. We went through this process for several months with them. Then we certified the technologies at their laboratories. Ericsson is going to incorporate this into package deals for clients."
The Speechtel technology features a new algorithm, which enables users to program the cellular telephone more easily. One can add, delete, or change phone numbers programmed into the cellular phone's memory with one verbal command. "One of the main differences between that product and others is that you only need one-pass training," says Cocozza. "On most systems, you have to train the system three or four times for each word. If you want to put 50 people in, you have to say it 200 times. People don't want to spend two hours programming the phone. So the new algorithm is robust. People don't have to think. They just have to say the name."
Ericsson is currently running a number of trials in Europe, Africa, and Asia and plans to test and deploy the new technology in the US over the next year or so. "Within a year or so, the States will be running one or two Vocalis systems," says Cocozza. "It is pretty much a 'keeping up with the Joneses' thing. As soon as someone sees that they've got this, everyone will be sitting in a bar and say: 'Look at what I've got on my mobile phone.' And that will be it. These things are end-user driven."
In Europe and Asia alone, the company predicts that the business from the technology will be 300 million by 2002. Figures for current use by phone companies are proprietary. "We are at the stage where this stuff is going to break through commercially," says Mohan Sawhney, a professor of technology marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "You can bet that a lot of companies are desperately drawing up plans to tackle this opportunity space."
But other analysts are skeptical that the technology will be a major hit right off the bat in the US. Marketing of the voice-activated products has been limited heretofore. One factor is that cellular-phone companies often lease their lines in a particular operating area, as Ameritech does in some of its territories. If it does not own the network, it cannot upgrade it, and offer the technology quickly.
"My hunch is that this is mostly an awareness issue," says the Gartner Group's Fenn. "We all know a lot of people who live and die by their cellular phones. I personally have not encountered reams of people who have tried it and not liked it. But I have a cellular telephone that has a zillion and one things that I haven't bothered to try and use."
