Nuance foresees moustachioed men's demise

VOICE RECOGNITION specialist, Nuance, is predicting the end for premium rate directory assistance services. Especially, it sees the likes of the moustached 118 118 service in Britain, for example, going down the Swanee.

The reason is quite simple. Nuance has a complete range of products which will entirely dispense with the need for human-powered interactive directory services.

The company can already claim to have handled half a billion automated directory enquiries in 2008 which have utilised Nuance technology..

Typically, Nuance powered directory services use voice recognition to guide callers to their ultimate objective. The service normally only needs to ask the caller three questions before providing the appropriate telephone number.

Nuance actually claims - almost certainly correctly - that the majority of UK directory enquiries calls which aren't free are placed by corporate employees who don't give a fig about the cost.

When the corporate money dries up, it argues, such employees will be faced with paying for directory searches. There are several ways out of this dilemma.

The most significant option will be to place search technology onto mobile phones which can look through an on-device addressbook and then go out onto the Net to obtain a number.

Rather than requiring the handset's user to key in text, the software will utilise speech recognition to create the search string.

Nuance will be demonstrating the very latest implementation of this technology, T9 Nav, at the forthcoming MWC show in Barcelona.

It will also reveal which European handset manufacturer has already built this technology into its phones. The INQ would guess that it's probably Sagem. µ