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E-business Watch
Tracking the
online media to bring you the key e-business trends
May
5, 2000
Internet finds its Voice
In its short history, the Internet has rapidly evolved
from a text-based medium to one complete with images, audio and video. Another major stage in this evolution is
currently unfolding, as the Internet begins to incorporate interactive voice
communication.
Driven by higher-speed connections, increasingly powerful
computers, and a more robust infrastructure, voice-enabled applications such as
Internet telephony and voice recognition will make communication over the
Internet evermore richer, more intuitive and central to the daily activities of
business and consumers.
Internet
telephony gains ground
By far the most important
voice-enabled transformation is Internet telephony or
Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP). Although over 2 billion minutes of VoIP
calls passed over the Internet in 1999, this represented just a tiny fraction
of the more than 5 trillion minutes in calls that were placed through
traditional telephone networks. And the market for VoIP is growing rapidly; Probe Research
predicts that by 2006 VoIP calls will reach 634.5 billion minutes.
For business, VoIP presents a compelling
alternative to traditional phone systems. Voice calls routed over
data networks reduce long distance charges and more easily connect remote
offices to internal networks and private branch exchanges (PBX). At the same time, existing computer-based
tools can be linked
with telephone systems, enabling direct dialing from contact databases,
integration of fax, e-mail and voice mail systems, and new audio and video
conferencing tools.
Despite these advantages, VoIP has lacked
the ease-of-use and reliability of conventional phone systems. This is rapidly
changing, however, as major hardware and software companies develop new VoIP
products. In February, Cisco
Systems unveiled a series of new product lines that support VoIP services,
and announced that more than 600 of its customers are currently testing its IP
telephony products. AT&T, Lucent Technologies and Comcast have also indicated
that they are set to begin VoIP trials.
Individual consumers are also being drawn
toward consumer-VoIP,
attracted by the low-cost of no-frills long-distance. Users of services such as
Net2Phone, Dialpad,
Deltathree and
Accesspower.com can place calls at little or no cost. Net2Phone, which is 30% owned by AT&T, currently routes
200,000 calls per day and has
signed distribution and networking deals with Yahoo, Real Networks,
Netscape and Compaq, among others. Competitor Dialpad, which offers unlimited free long
distance anywhere within United States, recently reported
that it has have
signed up over five million people for its service.
While personal computers currently make
awkward telephones, Net2Phone is experimenting with new devices that they hope
will combine the best elements of the two devices. It recently launched Yap
Phone, a telephone-like device that plugs into a computer’s USB port and YapJack,
which connects any telephone to the Internet to place a call.
New voice
applications for the web
The opportunities
created by Internet telephony involve much more than simply moving traditional
phone calls online. AOL, the
leader in instant messaging, has incorporated voice chat features into the
latest version of its Instant Messenger software. Portals such as Yahoo and Excite@Home, are also offering voice-based
messaging in their chat rooms. Meanwhile, a host of new
companies such as FireTalk, Hearme.com and LipStream are developing the tools and
infrastructure needed to voice-enable the Internet.
Internet
telephony and chat applications are only the beginning of what promises to be a
flood of new voice-enabled applications. Webex,
Ask
Jeeves and others are bringing customer call centres to the Web, enabling
real-time voice chat between customer service representatives and website
visitors. Companies such as Onebox are also using VoIP to
deliver unified messaging, which integrates fax, e-mail and voice-mail in a
single place.
While the audio
quality of today’s interactive voice applications more closely resembles
walkie-talkies than the telephone, they do foreshadow the future of a richer,
voice-enabled Internet.
On
the near horizon, applications powered by voice-recognition promise to deliver
a host of services to portable Internet devices. As part of the drive to Internet-enable automobiles,
Delphi
Automotive Systems and Palm recently announced
that they will make it possible for automobile-bound users to access Palm
handheld devices by voice recognition.
E-commerce applications such as NetByTel’s “Telephone e-Business
Platform” will
use speech recognition to enable online transactions over ordinary
telephones, while BeVocal and Nuance
have each developed voice synthesis technology that makes Internet-based
information such as traffic, stock quotes, and airline information available
over their phone.
Although it will be several years before
Internet telephony acquires the pervasiveness and quality of traditional
telephones, VoIP will ultimately transform the telecommunications industry, and
with new voice-enabled applications will provide businesses and consumers with
powerful new communication and collaboration tools.
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