NWC News Network, July 2 2008, 1030 hrs
OnMobile, the telecom Value Added Services (VAS) provider has acquired 100 percent of European speech recognition company, telisma.
The addition of telisma’s standards compliant speech recognition products & expertise will enable the telecom services provider to accelerate its penetration into fast growing emerging markets by developing new speech recognition language models. This technology enables quick and easy access to mobile applications and content and also strengthens the company’s mobile applications product suite.
Telisma was created in August 2000 as a spin-off from France Telecom’s Research and Development Laboratory funded by leading European venture capital firms. The speech recognition company has a team of around 40 employees including 9 PhDs & 18 engineers and has its operations in Europe & India. It’s core products centre around language processing software, which is used by telecom operators and enterprises for simple, intuitive interactivity with voice portal applications and customer care. It has in-depth intellectual property of over 200 man-years of speech technology as a result of in-house R&D development; this provides the solid foundation for launching new language models and rapid launch of new voice based services around the world.
Arvind Rao, CEO and co-founder of OnMobile said, "We are excited about joining hands with telisma to deliver a powerful suite of technology, applications and services to the global telecom industry. Their depth of knowledge and leadership in speech technologies perfectly complements our expertise in speech application development, enabling the way for a new generation of innovative telecom services."
Laurent Balaine, CEO, telisma said, "We are very excited to expand our presence in this exciting marketplace with OnMobile. We're confident that the combined strengths, services expertise, and talent of our companies will deliver a great experience for users, service providers and mobile operators. OnMobile fully supports telisma’s collaborative & partner friendly strategy to make speech technologies open and pervasive."
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