SmartVoice Conference Explores Power of Voice as Information

Inaugural SmartVoice services conference features industry experts and latest trends in creating more productive communications

Norwalk, Conn—January 30, 2014—Today TMC and HD Voice News wrapped up the first SmartVoice Conference, which was held January 28, 2014, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The event connected SmartVoice vendors with service providers, call center operators, resellers and businesses to discuss how SmartVoice services—such as call recording/archiving, hypervoice text-to-speech indexing, voice biometrics and voice analytics—can improve productivity, save money and yield competitive marketing information.

“Opening keynote speaker Martin Geddes stated the key principle of the emerging Smart Voice ecosystem – Voice is information,” HD Voice News Editor-in-Chief Doug Mohney said. “Smart Voice is a Big Data application, but Tier 1 carriers don’t get it. “

In today’s legacy PSTN world, voice is stovepiped, narrowband, and offers minimal and shrinking profitability. Over-the-top voice offerings have also become stale, offering little more than repetitive comparisons as to how much better than Skype they are. Recognizing voice in an IP-based world is valuable information, cloud service providers are able to offer differentated packages and value-added services that produce additional revenue per user (ARPU).

“What is Smart Voice?” said Mohney “It is any service that treats voice as information, rather than a separate function.”

“Voice biometrics is a key Smart Voice service,” Mohney stated. “One of yesterday’s presentations hinted a couple of major carriers are working on voice authentication services. I’m willing to bet T-Mobile, bless John Leguere’s pirate heart, is working on voice biometrics solutions for both consumer and business applications.”

Today’s world is flooded with cloud voice offerings essentially competing on price and reputation. Customers are going to seek out service provider packages that offer more value per dollar, with the ability to leverage those offerings for maximum benefit.  In yesterday’s sessions, Phone.com and Simple Signal stated they include call recording as a part of their voice packages.  Once recorded, conversations can be processed by other Smart Voice services such as HyperText speech-to-text indexing services for rapid searching and reference as well as mined for business improvement and competitive through voice analytics.

“I think there’s recognition in yesterday’s sessions that we’re only at the beginning of the Smart Voice era,” Mohney said. “Patience is going to be necessary to educate the general business world on the benefits of treating voice as information.  It is also going to take time to break legacy mindsets around how voice is treated.  Innovation is, once again, going to come from the bottom up, with Tier 1 carriers being the last onboard.”

The SmartVoice conference hosted a robust list of expert speakers who explored the transformation of traditional phone calls into more productive communications. The event’s presenters included Avaya, Sonus Networks, AudioCodes, Phone.com, Hypervoice Consortium and more, and a broad range of topics were included in the following sessions:

·         From Dumb Calling to Smart Voice

·         Call Recording/Call Archiving

·         Voice Biometrics – “My Voice is My Passport”

·         Voice Quality – The Cornerstone for Smart Voice Services

·         From Speech to Text to HyperVoice

·         Voice Analytics – Mining Call Center Traffic for Competitive Intelligence and Business Improvement

·         SmartVoice, UC and WebRTC – How Do They All Fit Together?

About TMC:

TMC is a global, integrated media company that supports clients' goals by building communities in print, online, and face to face. TMC publishes multiple magazines including Cloud Computing, M2M Evolution, Customer, and Internet Telephony. TMCnet is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries, and is read by as many as 1.5 million unique visitors monthly. TMC produces a variety of trade events, including ITEXPO, the world's leading business technology event, as well as industry events: Asterisk World; AstriCon; ChannelVision (CVx) Expo; Cloud4SMB Expo; Customer Experience (CX) Hot Trends Symposium; DevCon5 - HTML5 & Mobile App Developer Conference; LatinComm Conference and Expo; M2M Evolution Conference & Expo; Mobile Payment Conference; Software Telco Congress; Super Wi-Fi Summit - The Global Spectrum Sharing and TV White Space Event; SIP Trunking, Unified Communications & WebRTC Seminars; Wearable Tech Conference & Expo III; Fitness and Sports Wearable Technology (FAST) Expo II, WebRTC Conference & Expo IV; and more. Visit TMC Events for additional information.

About HD Voice News:

Since 2009, HD Voice News  has tracked the growing ecosystem of wideband voice services, solutions, and hardware around the globe. The publication’s third report on the industry, “HD Voice 2013: Explosion,” is available on the TMCnet website.

Media and Analyst Contact:       

Ashley Baster
Connect2 Communications.com
919-435-9112
Ashley@connect2comm.com