07 May 2002

Four Battles that Will Shape the Future of Voice Services (login req'd) BeVocal's marketing chief visits Europe and identifies four conflicts that will shape voice services globally: young vs old. Demographics: why are most voice and data services (with the exception of WAP games, SMS) marketed for adults if the fastest growing demographic is under 18? Consumer Brands vs. Carrier Brands. Handset mfrs (Nokia) and MVNOs (Virgin) are driving consumer demand. Carriers need to act to avoid becoming wholesalers to these upstarts. Handset Value vs. Network Value. Users don't care where the value-added services are: whoever provides compelling services wins. [Maybe. Rodcorp loves Nokia but is still betting on the value being in the network because it will be easier to rollout new services and hook into centralised services like billing. If carriers can deliver. Nokia should buy mm02 and not only hedge its bets, but try a hybrid model: both centralised (billing) and edge-services (local in the handset).] Fixed Carriers vs. Mobile Operators: where's the future growth? Fixed (wireline) carriers must move forward or risk being left behind. Related: Europe Embraces Speech (login req'd) 7:33:43 PM     comments

BeVocal bags another U.S. operator for voice services Chicago-based US Cellular will launch voice dialing, voice portal information services and voice access to email. The company is the eighth largest wireless carrier in the US with over 3.5 million customers. BeVocal ("generate more money from your network") also provides technology to BellSouth, Cingular and Qwest. However Amol Joshi said that BeVocal's advantage over these competitors is that it has set up a fertile application development environment through its developers' Cafe. Thousands of developers can be accessed for specialist applications based on VoiceXML, ensuring operators have a 'pipeline' of new services to launch. It's not immediately clear how operators genuinely get a broadband pipe of new services on demand from BV's developer community, but BV's intent is: build (own?, lock-in?) a community of loyal developers, and they're not alone in this, eg Tellme, VoiceGenie, HeyAnita (related: Commweb compared these developer toolkits and programmes in Jan 2001). Some of BeVocal's competition: Comverse is a messaging solution provider (of which voice-services are just one strand), fairly mobile-network-operator focused. "Dedicated to the development and delivery of a broad range of multimedia network-based infrastructure, systems, applications and services". Strong in Europe (eg the Blu and Bouygues press releases). Openwave is the world’s largest provider of mobile Internet software - ie: similar to Comverse (app services) but without the size and profitability (yet?: just inked a 10-year strategic alliance with IBM to put their apps onto the Websphere appserver, and sell through IBM Global Services). Tellme: 1999-2001's voice portal poster-boy, Tellme has gone silent recently. It's less mobile-operator-centric: in addition to hosting AT&T's 121 service, it provides call-centre, traveller information services etc. others like VoiceGenie, HeyAnita... 7:18:40 PM     comments

Crypto101: ETAOIN SRHLetter frequencies in English From analysis of "common use" we get: ETAOIN SRHLDC UMFGWP YBVKXJ QZ and ETNRIO ASDHLC FPUMYG WVBXKQ JZ. Printers used to order their metal types on linotype machines like this: ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP VBGKQJ XZ. And from text analysis of word lists (ie dictionaries) we get: EARIOT NSLCUD PMHGBF YWKVXZ JQ. Related: various text analysis and concordance software most common words (US english, common use): 5:30:52 PM     comments

Squishy cellphones add a buzz to calls Chang thinks "vibralanguages" could take off for the same reason as texting: sometimes people want to communicate something without everyone nearby knowing what they're saying. "And imagine actually being able to shake someone's hand when you close a business deal," she says. 5:15:03 PM     comments