Comverse and Angel.com Form Partnership

WOODBURY, NY and McLEAN, VA - Comverse, a unit of Comverse Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: CMVT), and Angel.com announced their joint engagement to offer a voice-driven suite of business productivity services to network service providers. This carrier-grade solution is available today for network deployment using the Comverse Media Server. Visitors to SpeechTEK, September 29 in New York, can see the Comverse and Angel.com team compete in the Speech Solutions CHALLENGE, where teams have just six hours to build and run a speech application, to be determined at the start of the competition. Voice-driven business productivity applications enable Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to automate routine operations using the human voice as a natural and intuitive interface for customers. Callers can access a variety of constructed services, from auto attendants to store locators to full voice-controlled order processing systems. All applications can be configured by the SME to address its specific business and customer needs. With the use of Angel.com's pre-built service templates, businesses can configure and implement their own services via the Web, realizing efficiency benefits but at a lower cost than was previously possible. The step-by-step guidance provided by configuration wizards enables users with no prior programming experience to construct their own professional quality business solutions. The services also generates usage reports and statistics that can be accessed online. "Like it or not, if customers call into your business and can't get the information they're looking for in a timely fashion, you risk losing them to your competitors," said Michael Zirngibl, president of Angel.com. "Our experience shows that SMEs want cost-effective solutions that allow them to enrich their customers' experience. We are pleased to be working with Comverse, the world leader in enhanced services, to make our self-service speech applications available to their global customer base of more than 400 carriers." The voice-driven interface to the Angel.com business productivity suite is powered by the network-based Comverse Media Server. The Comverse Media Server is a modular, standards-based VoiceXML gateway that is designed to provide a massively scalable platform for hosting voice-activated and interactive voice response (IVR) services in wireline and wireless networks. The Comverse Media Server enables multiple applications to share common platform resources, such as speech recognition and Text-to-Speech (TTS) engines, providing a means for network operators to deploy large numbers of enhanced voice services. The Comverse Media Server is part of the InSight solution, Comverse's open, value-added services environment for Total Communication and Infotainment Services. "Comverse is pleased to be working with Angel.com on this joint offering for carriers," said Benny Einhorn, chief marketing officer of Comverse. "We recognize that the SME segment represents a lucrative market opportunity for carriers, and we believe that this offering will enable them to tap entirely new sources of revenue. The partnership with Angel.com is another example of how Comverse is bringing solutions to market that employ our leading carrier-grade open-platform architecture."