Pingtel IP Phones Used by VoiceXML Technology Leaders and Developers

WOBURN, MA -- Pingtel announced that leaders of the VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language) market are distributing the intelligent Pingtel VoIP phones to support the prototyping, development and testing of new applications for their systems. Representing three different aspects of the VoiceXML market, Nuance, SandCherry and Tellme Networks Inc. each use and encourage their developers to use the Pingtel xpressa desktop phone and the Pingtel instant xpressa softphone, which emulates the desktop phone on a Microsoft Windows PC, as tools for developing VoiceXML applications. "Tellme recommends the Pingtel xpressa phone or instant xpressa softphone as a means of rapidly developing and testing VoiceXML applications created with SIP Tellme Studio, our VoIP-enabled developer community," said Don Jackson, vice president of advanced telephony at Tellme. "The ability to talk directly to our server using a field-proven SIP phone is very powerful." One beneficiary of the close working relationship between Pingtel and these VoiceXML leaders is Voyant Technologies. "The synergy among Pingtel and other leading VoiceXML companies is helping us develop and test our new voice conferencing solutions much more quickly," said Michael Remacle, vice president of business development at Voyant Technologies. "In addition, knowing that Pingtel phones have been tested by leading vendors such as Nuance and SandCherry helps ensure that we will go to market with an application that conforms to industry standards." According to Pingtel, their voice-over-IP phones were an obvious choice for these companies because of support for emerging industry standards, such as VoiceXML, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and Java. In addition, Pingtel's phones have been widely tested by third-party service providers and SIP-based VoIP equipment vendors to ensure interoperability with an array of services and equipment. "We provide the Pingtel instant xpressa softphone on our VoiceXML QuickStart CD of developer tools," said Tim Morgan, director of market development for Nuance. "The Pingtel phone provides a great prototyping tool and complements the offerings we provide through the Nuance Developer Network for incorporating speech recognition, voice authentication and text-to-speech techniques in new, powerful business solutions." "Developers who are building enhanced and next-generation services and applications such as voice-activated dialing, voice portals, unified messaging and voice-enabled instant conferencing for use with our SoftServer platform find the Pingtel instant xpressa softphone to be an invaluable tool when testing their work," said Christian Militeau, vice president of engineering for SandCherry. As a member of the VoiceXML Forum, Pingtel is an active proponent of VoiceXML as a development platform for a new generation of voice-enabled telephony applications. Similar to HTML, VoiceXML is a high-level markup language that allows developers to create a wide array of innovative voice services more quickly and easily. "Support for open development environments, such as VoiceXML, SIP and Java, is one of the keys to our success," said Jay Batson, CEO and co-founder, Pingtel. "By embracing open standards and offering the world's only intelligent VoIP phones, we are accelerating the development of new phone services and applications that will make life easier and more productive for businesses of all sizes." VoiceXML has facilitated important voice technologies, such as automated speech recognition and speech synthesis for converting text to spoken words. The open standard already plays a vital role in making Internet content - including news, sports, stock quotes, traffic updates and weather reports - available by phone. VoiceXML also powers many of the voice-activated contact center applications that allow phone users to get airline arrival times, flight booking, online banking, package tracking and self-service customer service. In addition, a variety of new phone applications are being developed with VoiceXML, including automated notification, one number find me, personal voice dialing, and the ability to read and dictate e-mails over the phone.