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Alltel to offer voice-to-text service in Q4
Alltel announced that it would launch a voice-to-text service from SpinVox in the fourth quarter of this year. The service converts voice messages to text and sends them directly to another user's cell phone. It works with any SMS-capable phone and requires no additional downloading. SpinVox has been developing the technology for four years, which it calls Voice-to-Screen.
The Marlow, U.K.-based company also reportedly has a deal with a bigger carrier in the U.S., which it will announce later this year. Regional carrier Cincinnati Bell already offers the service. In the U.K., there is talk of a launch from Vodafone, but the service is already available from Carphone Warehouse, which invested in SpinVox. The company's CEO Christina Domecq told the Guardian that SpinVox is always on the lookout for additional funding, whether private or an IPO. She indicated that there will be more news on the funding front come early next year.
For more on the launch:
- read this release
- also check out this article from the Guardian
Comments (2) | Post a comment
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Comments
Posted by Dean Weber (CEO - One Voice Tech.) | January 28, 2008 - 1:45am
SpinVox - human transcription and privacy issues
I am surprised that SpinVox and their customers including Alltel and Rogers do not make people aware that the SpinVox service is 100% human transcribed. This leads to tremendous privacy issues as an unknowing caller leaving a message for an Alltel / Rogers subscribers may leave personal or confidential information that will be heard by a human transcriber (India based).
Electronic privacy is the law in the U.S. and consumers should be aware of this situation.
Posted by Tony Carter | March 12, 2008 - 9:27am
As a SpinVox employee with an actual window into how we convert voice to text, I have to respond to the claim above. For five years now, SpinVox has been developing our proprietary Voice Message Conversion System (VMCS). As a "live learning" system, it utilizes both speech recognition engines and humans to ensure the quality of our conversions. When the system is confused due to new language or perhaps ambient noise, it knows to ask a human for intervention. In the case of new language or lexicon, they not only correct the conversion and send it on it's way, they add that to the VMCS dictionary for future, automated use. The majority of our English conversions are now automated. The automation process is enhanced every time a person speaks a message for conversion. To date, more than four million individual voices have been processed by the system and more than 50 million messages have been converted. We adhere to the security requirements of our clients and our employees are bound by at least the laws of the state in which they operate -- for instance, the EU Data Protection Act. In fact, every human interaction is completely traceable and if an employee were to breach that trust, we would bring the full force of the law upon them. SpinVox is currently available via carriers on four continents.
