Telisma Opens Offices in Spain and Italy

PARIS, FRANCE -- Telisma, a software editor specializing in speech technologies for telecommunications and a European leader in the major operator, voice access providers and enterprise markets, announces the opening of offices in Milan and Madrid. Telisma has chosen southern Europe as the starting point for its international development because of its dynamism and the openness of its market. Voice portals, automation of directories and call centers as well as voicemail are all areas in which Telisma's target applications are meeting a real need, as expressed by enterprises and operators. According to Telisma, in Italy and in Spain, operators are confronted with increasing levels of competition and are looking for innovating services which will help them find and keep new customers and reduce their operating costs. Speech command-based services can help them meet this challenge by providing real added value, especially in mobile situations. Telisma's Madrid base will enable Telisma to access Spain, Portugal and South America. The Spanish mobile market alone accounts for over 25 million subscribers, which makes it the fifth largest market in Europe in terms of volume. With a rate of penetration of 63.72% the mobile market is currently reaching saturation point. According to Juan Ramon Campos, in charge of the Iberian market at Telisma, "A year ago, the challenge for operators was to convince people to make the move to GSM. Now, the flow of new subscribers is drying up and customers who had been acquired are being increasingly tempted to change operator. The challenge now is to create customer loyalty and attract customers from competitor companies using all the means at their disposal! In this context, speech-based services which are extremely attractive, are a wonderful commercial asset!" In Italy, Telisma also benefits from an extremely promising environment. Historically, the first country in Europe where the number of mobile subscribers exceeded the number of fixed subscribers, Italy is now ranked No. 2 in Europe in terms of penetration (79.71%) and mobile subscribers (45.05 million). "Telisma's robust technology which is specially adapted to large rollouts responds perfectly to the requirements of fixed and mobile operators in terms of wide-scale speech-based services", says Thierry Vaccari, who is in charge of the Italian market for Telisma. In Spain and in Italy, Telisma is hoping to establish close partnerships with major integrators, access providers, equipment manufacturers and speech service providers. "The creation of a powerful network of technical and commercial partners is at the heart of our commercial strategy. It will enable us to fully provide all the solutions our customers need", explains Thierry Vaccari. Telisma's speech technologies are available in major international languages including Italian and Castillian Spanish and will soon be available in European and Brazilian Portuguese. Catalan will also be available soon and is eagerly-awaited on the Spanish market.