Brooktrout Technology, Loquendo and Netcom Team up to Deliver Speech-Enabled Applications; Brooktrout Technology and Philips Speech Processing Partner

NEW YORK, NY - Brooktrout Technology Inc., a provider of hardware and software platforms that enable applications for the New Network, Loquendo, the developer of multilingual speech technologies and Netcom, a provider of telecom systems in Latin America, announced that they have teamed up to provide speech based solutions. Loquendo TTS text-to-speech software and Loquendo ASR automatic speech recognition software has been integrated by Netcom on Brooktrout's TR1000 media resource platform. Loquendo offers a range of multilingual speech technology products, which enable users to obtain information through speech-enabled services using any phone. "Speech recognition technology is growing in popularity and Brooktrout is excited to pursue this market with two leading speech product companies," said Giovanni Punzo, Business Development Sales Manager, Latin America, for Brooktrout Technology. "Brooktrout continues its commitment to the speech market by actively pursuing technology partnerships that will allow us to provide reliable and interoperable communications products to our customers." "Loquendo, Brooktrout and Netcom share the common goal of guaranteeing the flexibility and reliability required to deploy voice services of any complexity," said Silvano Giorcelli, CEO and Managing Director of Loquendo. "Using Loquendo's multilingual speech recognition and text-to-speech software, Brooktrout's TR1000 and Netcom's expertise in speech solutions, customers can build and deploy quality voice services in much less time than expected." "Partnering with two industry leaders like Brooktrout and Loquendo allows us to provide the carrier grade, dependable solutions that will create the new voice-driven information gateways for our corporate customers," said Ranieri Mestroni, President and CEO of Netcom. "As the speech market continues to gain momentum, we plan to be at the forefront with our advanced voice portal platforms." Brooktrout Technology and Philips Speech Processing Partner NEW YORK, NY - Brooktrout Technology Inc., a provider of hardware and software platforms that enable applications for the New Network, announced that it is has formed a technology partnership with the telephony speech processing business unit of Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG) to integrate SpeechPearl, its automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine, with Brooktrout's TR1100 and Vantage Series communications products. This technology will allow developers to incorporate speech recognition functionality into their unified communication applications. "Speech recognition has become a critical component of unified communications applications, with application developers looking to easily integrate natural language recognition into their products and drive them to market faster," said Frank Caris, president of the Dallas-based speech processing division of Philips Electronics. "This integration of advanced technology from Brooktrout and Philips will provide developers with the latest tools to build voice-driven application platforms for enterprise messaging and enhanced service provider applications." SpeechPearl is a software-only speech recognition and natural language understanding engine from Philips. SpeechPearl is suitable for a variety of voice-enabled telephony applications such as directory assistance services, information and customer care services, banking applications, name dialing and unified messaging. Callers no longer have to memorize abstract sequences of numbers—as with touchtone or number recognition, they can simply say which name or information they would like to access. On October 7, 2002, ScanSoft Inc. (NASDAQ: SSFT) and Royal Philips Electronics announced a definitive agreement for ScanSoft to acquire the Philips Speech Processing Telephony and Philips Speech Processing Voice Control business units and related intellectual property, including SpeechPearl. Brooktrout Technology offers the hardware for speech technology and provides the platforms and technical features necessary to voice-enable enterprise and service provider applications, such as unified communications and messaging, conferencing, connection services, voice portal and IVR applications. In addition to its relationship with Philips, Brooktrout also has ongoing partnerships with SpeechWorks and Nuance, and also has plans to support the RealSpeak text-to-speech engine from ScanSoft. Brooktrout is a member of both the VoiceXML Forum and the SALT Forum, and shares their goal of accelerating the use of speech in multi-modal and telephony systems through systems based on open standards.