Interactive Voice Technology Applications
David R. Fischell, Sarbmeet S. Kanwal, Daniel Furman · AT&T Technical Journal · 1990
Voice, data, and video information can be delivered to our homes or businesses using today's technology. But the U.S. market for multimedia information services is in its infancy, and interactive-voice services are merely the first step on the evolutionary path. Applications that use interactive voice fall into four categories: information delivery, entertainment, voice messaging, and transactions. All share a common trait — a person interacts with a machine over telephone lines by sending Touch-Tone signals in response to stored voice messages. AT&T's interactive-voice service offerings are based on a common network platform — the Enhanced Services Complex (ESC). An ESC is a collection of switching, speech processing, and computer equipment networked together to provide enhanced voice and data services over the public switched telecommunications network. Currently, these services enable callers to interact with and manipulate stored audio information. Soon, the ESC will include capabilities for speaker verification, speech recognition, and facsimile transmission.