Etisalat offers Arabic speech recognition solutions

Residents across the Mena region will shortly not have to listen to disembodied voices over the telephone adjuring them to "press one for accounts, two for administration and zero for operator".

They will, instead, have 'OrienTel'.

The project offers Arabic-language speech recognition solutions offering speech-enabled services being developed jointly by Etisalat's Contact Centre in Ajman, and Philips Speech Processing, a business unit of Royal Philips Electronics.

Etisalat will support Philips in a large-scale database project, coordinated by Philips Speech Processing and funded by the European Commission, to produce linguistic resources throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

The project aims at creating an automatic speech recognition system (ASR) of the Arabic language, entailing a large database of voice samples combining different Arabic accents. The Contact Centre has been charged with collecting these representative speech samples.

"Our mission is to collect accurate voice samples from all types of Arabic accents such as those found in the different GCC countries, the Egyptian accent and even the Arabic accents of Indian and Pakistani origin," commented Mohammed Bamakhrama, general manager.

OrienTel seeks to ensure multi-lingual access to services such as directory assistance, unified messaging, information retrieval, banking and other service portals by allowing users to speak the language most convenient for them.

Bamakhrama estimated it would take six months to collect the voice sample database. "We will then look at selecting a vendor to implement the automatic speech recognition solutions at the Contact Centre."

The telecommunications and banking segments in the UAE are amongst the most advanced in the world and experience continuous market growth while adoption of the Internet is relatively low.

To serve increasing customer demand for user-friendly access to call centre based services at any time and from any place, speech-enabled services over the telephone are key.

The Arabic-language speech recognition solutions will allow Arab native speakers to use these services in their own language instead of English, which is currently used. People will be able to speak modern standard Arabic, colloquial or other versions, or even English.

"Business solutions based on Philips' technology help telecom operators, banks, call centres and other companies to improve customer service and offer new services in a cost-efficient way," said Ruud van Vessem, chief operating officer, Philips Speech Processing.

"Our project with Etisalat will ensure that speech-driven telephony solutions will soon become widely available for variants of Arabic as diverse as the ones spoken in the Gulf, Levant or Maghreb regions and in Egypt."

The Contact Centre handles inbound and outbound interactions over the telephone, through faxes and over the Internet, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It covers a variety of services including subscription, fault management, disbursement of general and account specific information.

Today, the centre also handles customer interactions on behalf of Etisalat, Emirates Internet & Multimedia, E-Vision and Comtrust.

Philips Speech Processing, a developer and provider of speech technologies in over 40 languages, claims to have the largest installed base of speech recognition and natural language understanding systems in Europe, and is a large and growing provider of speech technology in the Americas and other regions.

Installations include directory assistance and call centre services automation, voice portals, telephony and Internet applications.