AT&T Extends Reseller Agreement with Wizzard Software

AT&T Intellectual Property today announced an expanded agreement with Wizzard Software to provide licensing and support for AT&T Natural Voices, the company's text-to-speech software.

As part of the agreement, Wizzard will offer and support the latest versions of AT&T Natural Voices, including its most recent release, Version 4.2 of AT&T Natural Voices Text-to-Speech (TTS) for Linux.Version 4.2 for Windows is due out early next year.

Version 4.2 of the software includes a new streamlined architecture that makes it easier and quicker for application and Web developers to deploy high-performance speech solutions. In addition to 20 voices in eight languages, the new version adds Italian.

"AT&T Intellectual Property is focused on driving innovations that improve how we communicate, work and live," said Lisa McFarlin, executive director of technology licensing for AT&T Intellectual Property. "In many cases, the company delivers these innovations directly, but we also recognize the value of making new capabilities available to the larger marketplace via licensing arrangements. Our new agreement with Wizzard is a great example of this approach, enabling any application developer to take advantage of the same state-of-the-art text-to-speech capabilities that power the hosted AT&T VoiceTone Service."

"The technology developed by AT&T Labs includes a highly flexible engine with language and voice-specific custom dictionaries that allows users to define the pronunciation of certain words and customize speaking rate, volume and voices, resulting in a very natural sounding synthetic speech system," said Bruce Phifer, general manager of Wizzard Technology & Services Division. "The combination of this extraordinary and scalable technology with Wizzard's low-cost deployment licensing model is a win-win for developers, integrators and business clients, allowing them to produce substantial savings and efficiencies by automating applications or services."