Acapela Gives a Voice to EDA's New Belgian Directory Service

EDA enters the voice-based directory assistance market with the launch of the new 1313 (thirteen thirteen) directory service in Belgium.

Acapela Group gives a voice to EDA's 1313 service, a new arrival which adds a second directory service to the Belgian public.

A new number with 24/7 availability, 1313 is providing a directory service. The 1313 service can give any of the listed Belgian phone numbers, and/or provide a reverse search. The service gives the phone number, but also the full address of the recipient. All the results are read out in real time by Acapela's speech synthesis.

"The expertise and the service offer were decisive in our choice of Acapela's technology." points out Laurent Baeke, co-founder of EDA.

EDA made a point of offering its Belgian users a service that takes full account of the pronunciation difficulties of related to French words in Flemish, and vice-versa, for optimal comprehension and pertinent restitution of the information.

"A town like Schaerbeek, in the outskirts of Brussels, which a traditional French TTS would pronounce shar-bake, will be correctly pronounced in the Belgian-French way, i.e. skar-bek. The same applies to many Belgian surnames such as Vandenbroek, Peeters, Janssen, etc." adds Baeke.

Another key point of the service: the same voice is used to deliver all the information, whether of French or Dutch (Flemish) origin.