MWC: Ditech brings voice-enabled media to wireless operator networks

Mobile-voice vendor Ditech Networks today announced plans to launch mStage, a network-based platform for mobile carriers that brings the Web to voice conversations. The service will let mobile subscribers use their voice, as well as text, to interact with Web applications including social networking, instant messaging and 411 during a phone call. Based on its open [application programming interface (API)], Web developers can also add to this list of voice-integrated apps situated at the edge of a carrier’s network.

By speaking a keyword during a phone call, mStage users can connect with the Web, where they can check email, send a message on their social network, find a location or research local entertainment. For example, if the caller says “talk, talk,” the service would automatically connect him with a requested individual, whose name can be pulled from any Web-based address book, including Google, Facebook or Outlook. Conversely, the Web interface can “whisper” to a subscriber during a call to offer an important reminder, traffic alerts or to display an IM from a friend on the Web. These whispers can be heard only by the caller or by all parties on the call, depending on pre-set privacy settings.

“We can expose on the web a presence indicator showing you are on the call with a certain permission set and people who can see that can whisper into the conversation,” said CEO Todd Simpson. “You can target a subset like certain employees or non employees or what not and have people hear or not hear what’s going on depending on the Web settings. The objective is to make that highly configurable so the user through the open API can define how they want it to work.”

The second element is the ability to recognize voice inflections or keywords in a conversation and take action on them, he added. This could include invoking a translation service when two people are speaking different languages or detecting high stress levels and recommending a call agent take action or escalate the call for response.

“We would open up the APIs and allow the large minds on the Internet to figure out what the killer app is, but these are some ideas,” Simpson said.

Ditech’s history is in providing carrier-grade voice quality and codec transcoding applications for within the network, so the launch of mStage marks a departure for the company, Simpson said. It built this media processing platform to be installed at either the core or edge of a carrier’s network based on its traffic requirements. The product is designed to support heavy traffic loads and to be available to any subscriber on any call – point-to-point or point-to-multipoint.