EarthLink Selects Audiopoint to Provide E-mail-by-Phone Service

FAIRFAX, VA - Audiopoint, a speech applications company developing products for businesses that reach consumer markets, and EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), one of the nation's Internet service providers (ISPs), announced a contractual agreement that will give EarthLink's 4.9 million subscribers instant telephone access to e-mail anytime, anywhere, by leveraging Audiopoint's latest product release and speech application service, E-mail-by-Phone. "Having EarthLink contract with us to deliver the E-mail-by-Phone service is a win-win for both companies," said Brian L. Lichorowic, CEO and President of Audiopoint. "With Audiopoint's technology and network, EarthLink is able to deliver a truly distinctive service to its customers by offering them the ability to experience a technologically advanced communications medium. Today's announcement furthers Audiopoint's goal of providing our customers with the most progressive speech applications on the market today." Using speech technology from Nuance, E-mail-by-Phone leverages the robust personal information management capabilities of Audiopoint's Voice Terminal product suite. An online interface allows users to create a personal contact manager and establish service preferences and filtering rules to help eliminate spam and junk mail. Once registered, users can retrieve previously unread e-mail and listen to their messages through text-to-speech technology. Users may then respond to messages by sending a personally recorded WAV file attachment. "E-mail-by-Phone will allow our subscribers to access their EarthLink e-mail even when they don't have access to their PC," said Erika Jolly, EarthLink's vice president of value-added services. "As part of our commitment to providing quality Internet connections, this partnership with Audiopoint allows us to provide our subscribers with the flexibility of anytime, anywhere access to e-mail." "Audiopoint's creation of E-mail-by-Phone is an evolutionary occurrence that represents the next wave of advanced communications technology for end users. It's functional, stable and offers a full scope of features to provide a truly superior experience," said Lichorowic. "Integrating state-of-the-art technology from Nuance speech recognition and Erogo has been instrumental in the success of the E-mail-by-Phone service." Audiopoint and EarthLink forsee subscribers finding the new, E-mail-by-Phone service effective in supporting today's mobile lifestyle by understanding the critical need to access information on demand.