Voice-to-text deal could spur new mobile services

Two vendors of mobile voice technology have teamed up to power carrier services that transcribe voicemail messages and conference calls into text.

Ditech Networks, which supplies gear that scrubs background noise from cell-phone calls, signed an exclusive deal with SimulScribe to resell that company's voice-to-text technology and integrate it into fledgling mobile Web-based services.

Voice-to-text services pose obvious advantages for users who want to send a written message when they don't have access to a keyboard and to recipients who lack the time or inclination to listen to their messages. But accurately transcribing spoken words has been a serious computing challenge. Ditech said it believes SimulScribe has the best available translation technology, but even with it, the companies will be offering an operator-assisted system in addition to full automation.

As a voice-processing equipment vendor, Ditech has relationships with mobile operators including Verizon Wireless and AT&T. It now wants to sell carriers the tools they need to offer their subscribers a voicemail transcription service that costs less than using call-center operators. As an add-on service, having operators listen to voicemails and type them out typically costs between US$5 and $25 per month, depending on the number of messages, according to Karl Brown, vice president of marketing at Ditech. A fully automated service would probably start out costing about $5 per month and fall in price, eventually reaching the point where carriers can bundle it for free, he said. Ditech will also make the technology available to enterprises to transcribe their own voicemails internally.

Ditech will integrate SimulScribe's technology with its own mStage voice-quality product platform, which will improve the accuracy of voice-to-text in typical usage environments, the company said. The company also plans to integrate SimulScribe's technology into a suite of tools, called Toktok, that it offers today in a beta test. Toktok, a set of mobile Web-based applications, includes capabilities such as voice-based call commands, "whispered" audio notifications of calendar entries and social-networking messages, and memo dictation over the phone. It probably will emerge from beta in the next two months, Brown said.

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