Speech-enabled services using TelePortal™ software and VoiceXML

TelePorta(TM) software, which resides on a speech-enabled telephony platform, brings the advantages of the World Wide Web to advanced speech recognition telephone services. In response to an incoming call, this software retrieves a dialogue specification document from a Web server interprets it to collect input from a caller, and submits the input to a (possibly different) Web server, which processes the input and may continue the call by returning another dialogue specification document. The TelePortal architecture includes a browser (to retrieve and cache Web content), a set of interpreters (to process documents), and a set of platform interfaces (to allow the interpreters to control the speech and telephony resources of the host platform). Using the Web to retrieve dialogue documents and to process the input they collect creates a new business opportunity for network operators and third-party application developers. Interactive voice response (IVR) services, which may be made available from a standard wireline or wireless telephone, are easily programmed using the emerging Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML*) standard. TelePortal software is being integrated into several Lucent platforms. We present examples of the new network IVR opportunities that this software provides for one of these-the platform of the intelligent network.