Sharechat Logo

Telecom buys speech business

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Friday 7th December 2001

Text too small?
Telecom (NZSE: TEL) has paid $500,000 for a speech technology service developed by the local subsidiary of Australian-listed company Voicenet.

Telecom says its mobile division has bought the Word Up operation from Voicenet in a deal that will see it own the hardware, third party software and a non-exclusive licence to use, develop and modify the software.

The New Zealand telco will own any modifications it makes to the system while Voicenet will keep an ongoing interest through potential royalties, depending on traffic levels, for the next two to five years.

Word Up is a speech portal service that offers Telecom's mobile phone customers access to a number of web-based information services, including their emails, using speech recognition and text to speech technologies.

Telecom Mobile executive, Nic Holdgate, say it is an innovative service that offers great potential.

"No other company offers their customers such a service. Our customers who use it - whether it is for email to their phone, or the host of news and information services - absolutely love it."

Mr Holdgate says by purchasing the technology Telecom Mobile will be able to operate it more cost effectively

Voicenet has sold the business as part of a continuing review and rationalisation of operations, both within Australia and internationally. It says the speech technology and operations were successful but resulted in a cash flow drain.

"With this sale and the securement of alternative employment for all staff, Voicenet's cash obligations for New Zealand will now cease," the company told its shareholders..

  General Finance Advertising    

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:
Your name:
Your email:
Not displayed to the public
Comment:
Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved.

Related News:

Telecom Corporation of New Zealand (TEL)
Telecom in drive to latch on to growing data usage with 4G mobile launch next month
Telecom lines up to buy 700MHz spectrum to extend reach of 4G network
Telecom backs setting copper prices until 2020, warns against getting too far away from input cost
Telecom puts $60M price tag on new Auckland data centre, Hawkins, AECOM win build
Telecom ends jobs purge, looks for ‘more sophisticated’ ways to save money
Telecom FY earnings fall to bottom of guidance range, sees unchanged dividend in 2014
Telecom takes spat with Vodafone to regulator after dropping court action
Telecom unbundling key to regulator's copper conundrum
Telecom lures customers to faster services in EPL deal