Tellme y Cingular planean ampliar sus servicios (Inglés)

SAN FRANCISCO – Tellme Networks and Cingular Wireless are planning an enhanced telephone information service that will use Tellme’s voice recognition technology to offer Internet-style searches in addition to telephone directory information.
 
Tellme, based in Mountain View, California, a major provider of automated directory service to cellphone carriers, finds itself in an increasingly crucial position as cell carriers and Web portals like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo start to explore the lucrative market for mobile search.
 
Tellme handles more than two billion directory calls a year and has said that 74 percent of the toll-free directory calls that it handles are completed without human intervention.
 
Tellme began to offer automated voice information services through AT&T Wireless in 2001. An expanded version of that service will now be offered to Cingular’s customers in early 2007.
 
As cellphones add features like Web search, it is likely to touch off a heated competition to develop lucrative location-based advertising delivery systems.
 
On Thursday, for example, Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said that the company’s advertising relationship with KDDI, the Japanese cellphone service provider, begun this summer, was going better than the company had expected. This is even before its planned localization technology has been deployed, he said.
 
The new Cingular service will permit subscribers to pose broader queries than a traditional directory lookup. It will be possible to find movie times and locations and to purchase tickets, and to obtain driving directions. Information can be delivered as text-to-speech or as a simple text message to a cellphone.
 
Fuente: International Herald Tribune