His master's voice

Unified messaging seems to be one of those applications perennially poised on the brink of widespread success that never quite tips into mass deployment. And voice recognition is becoming a strong way to provide automated services over the phone, whether it's directory lookup or e-commerce location. So could combining a robust speech engine with one-number messaging be the next killer application for phone carriers?

Webley Systems thinks so. The company sells and licenses a personal phone assistant that allows end users to access their voice mail, e-mail and faxes from one unified mailbox and to perform full-featured calling using speech activation. The company produces two versions of its product: one entirely phone-based and another with a Web interface that lets customers download the contacts stored in a hand-held device and immediately call those numbers with voice activation.

Call features offered by Webley include follow-me; call screening; Call Blast, which rings every phone in a customer's profile simultaneously; and "whisper" call waiting, which gives the name of a second caller so that only the subscriber can hear it. Customers can set up rules to have calls routed to someone else when they're on lunch or to voice mail after business hours.

But one real strength is the voice activation, which uses a robust speech engine from Nuance Communications. Callers to a Webley subscriber are greeted by the plummy tones of a very British butler: "Hello, I'm Webley!" They are then told whose number they've called and asked how they would like to proceed - ring the number, find the subscriber or go directly to voice mail.

Webley users also can have e-mail read to them over the phone via text-to-speech software and direct faxes to a nearby fax machine. Teleconferences of up to 32 parties can be set up using the Web interface to click on participants or over the phone. The service even offers what it calls "conferencing on the fly" - users can just speak a contact's name to have the personal assistant dial up and connect a third party while they're on a call.

"Most people turn their wireless phones off because they don't want to be constantly interrupted," said Hal Poel, senior vice president of marketing and product development for Webley. "But with Webley, you can screen those calls, send most of them directly into voice mail and still respond immediately when that one call you're expecting from your boss or your spouse comes through."

Having one's phone switched on all the time is part of the "Webley culture" around the company's Deerfield, Ill., headquarters, Poel said.

Besides tightly integrated speech recognition, Webley's other distinctive feature lets customers keep their existing phone numbers as their sole point of phone contact with the system. "It's not a changed telephone number andnot a toll-free number service, which many of them have been to date," Poel said. "Those systems put an unnecessary burden on the customer. `I'm doing this to simplify my life, and you're telling me I need another phone number?'" The company works with local phone providers in its territories to port customers' phone numbers, locating its servers in the same place on the networks that carriers place their own voice mail servers - usually in protected data centers close to the central offices.

Webley is pursuing a dual marketing track, selling the service itself in some places but also partnering with local providers on a privately branded Webley version. In Chicago, for example, users can buy the service directly from Webley. There, the company co-locates with competitive local exchange carrier Focal Communications. "They love us," said Jim Hudmon, Webley's director of product management. "They're used to customers dialing in for Internet access and occupying the line for hours. This is a way for them to rack up some outbound minutes, when people listen to their messages, and then initiate an immediate call back."

The company has done some mass-media marketing around Chicago, but it is targeting primarily commercial customers: law offices, medical centers, Realtors and insurance firms.

But Webley expects that most of its future sales will come from alliances with carriers of all types - landline telcos, ISPs and wireless companies. Last March the company signed a deal with SBC Communications, which will roll out Webley in Los Angeles as PacBell Assistant. And last month, it received investments from America Online and Net2Phone, which now will have the right to license Webley technology for integration with its voice-over-IP solutions.

"We're pursuing a dual strategy, selling to all kinds of service providers - telephone, Internet and wireless players - and also selling it ourselves," Poel said. "We're crossing the chasm here with these services, so it's going to take some time to get them accepted."

Large telcos have little doubt that they can sell these services to portions of their customer base, either the residential accounts or the more lucrative commercial ones. But they want to ensure that whatever solution they select is ready for big-time mass deployment and is scalable in the extreme. Webley and its fellow assistant-based unified messaging companies - Portico, General Magic and Call Sciences - need to prove that they can scale up to millions of users.

"Frankly, they are unproven at best," said Roger Walton, an analyst at Ovum Research, which predicts that unified messaging will be a $31 billion market in 2006. "When you look at [Webley's] architecture, you have to say that they haven't designed this the way Octel, Nortel or Alcatel are doing unified messaging," he said. "But the time frame for carrier-grade stuff is pretty long, so it's a race to see whether Webley and the rest can grow into big-time players before Octel and the big guys develop the level of feature functionality that they have."

But Walton admits that Webley has an edge with its speech-activation features. "They have a high level of functionality [with voice activation], and that may be what lets them succeed," he said.