U.S. Coast Guard Signs Agreement with Wizzard Software

Wizzard Software announced the signing of a licensing agreement with the U.S.Coast Guard. The Coast Guard will integrate AT&T's Natural Voices speech engine into its Radio Automated Broadcast Scheduler (RADABS) software program. The U.S. Coast Guard is a military, maritime, multi-mission service within the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to protecting the safety and security of America.

To ensure coverage of different ocean areas for which the United States has responsibility and ensure all ships of every size and nationality can receive safety information, the U.S. Coast Guard broadcasts different types of maritime safety warning messages and uses the RADABS with a variety of radio systems. Most of these broadcasts, except those over VHF and MF radiotelephone, are now made by computer. The RADABS software allows the Coast Guard to broadcast weather and hydrographic information, such as storm warnings, to mariners, the boating public and other government agencies. 

Weather information is transmitted into the Coast Guard's message system from a variety of sources.  RADABS searches all the messages, parsing to a database those that meet the Coast Guard's criteria for automated broadcast.  Elements of the parsed data are used to determine the correct broadcast time, broadcast location and priority level.

Just before broadcast time, the RADABS application retrieves and formats the messages for broadcast. Using AT&T Natural Voices speech engine, messages to be sent out as voice data will be converted from text to digital speech. The messages are then sorted by priority and sent to the appropriate device and location for transmission via high and medium frequency transmitters. From there, equipment on vessels and aircraft can receive the message on a variety of message handling systems.