Europolitan and Pipebeach develop voice-controlled mobile portal
Europolitan and Pipebeach develop voice-controlled mobile portal Pipebeach, a specialist in voice technology combined with the mobile Internet, is to produce a voice-controlled mobile portal for Europolitan. Customers will be able to use their mobile phones to access a number of speech-controlled services from an Internet portal, such as weather forecasts and news updates. The portal is based on speechWeb, a voice-controlled platform developed by Pipebeach. Users simply call a number and navigate through their connected services with their voices. Users will be able to enter the system via the web and personalise the service by ordering the information categories they require. "Speech is an excellent way of controlling services. Speech technology has advanced to the stage where it can be integrated into our services," says Mikael Kluge, head of Europolitan's Mobile Internet business area. "Customers will be able to adapt voice portal content, add the services they are interested in and remove the ones they don't need. The Internet offers an array of services and information that can be made available via voice portals." "The Swedish market for mobile Internet services is highly advanced and we are delighted that Europolitan has chosen to base its voice portal on speechWeb," says CEO of Pipebeach, Christer Granberg. "This is an excellent start to a working relationship that offers a wealth of development possibilities for new speech-controlled services and products for Europolitan's customers." Services offered via the portal have been developed using web technology and the new mark-up language, VoiceXML. Voice XML will be the new standard for voice-based web services. Pipebeach's service platform, speechWeb, includes advanced speech synthesis and voice recognition technology and can be used for an unlimited number of different voice access applications for the mobile Internet. The portal will be launched during the course of next year. Meanwhile, why not listen to the demo version of the service? Just call: +46 8 555 135 99. Europolitan AB is a Swedish GSM operator that prioritises service and quality. The company's head office is in Karlskrona, Sweden. Europolitan is a leader in the field of technically advanced services for GSM 900/1800. The Europolitan Group, which also includes the stock market listed parent company Europolitan Holdings AB and Europolitan's fellow subsidiaries, Europolitan Stores AB, Ocom AB, Doberman AB and Mobile Relations AB, has around 1,200 employees. For more information, please visit our web site, www.europolitan.se Pipebeach was founded in 1998 and develops products and services for the rapidly growing market for mobile Internet services. The company's expertise today embraces longstanding experience within the development of peripheral services and Internet applications for GSM, and within research in speech synthesis and voice recognition. The company's flagship product, speechWeb, is a voice-controlled platform that accommodates a whole series of new mobile services such as personalised news updates, voice-activated e-mail message reading and mobile e-commerce. SpeechWeb supports VoiceXML - the upcoming web standard for voice-based Internet services. PipeBeach is chairman of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortia) project group, which is responsible for standardising VoiceXML. For more information about PipeBeach or speechWeb, please visit: www.pipebeach.com. For more information, please contact: Mikael Kluge, Head of the Mobile Internet business area, Europolitan AB Tel: +46 708 33 12 05, e-mail: mikael.kluge@europolitan.se Christer Granberg, CEO, Pipebeach AB Tel: +46 708 27 83 50, e-mail: christer.granberg@pipebeach.se. Johan Holmgren, Public Relations Manager, Europolitan AB Tel: +46 708 33 14 00, e-mail: johan.holmgren@europolitan.se ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2000/11/22/20001121BIT01230/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2000/11/22/20001121BIT01230/bit0002.pdf