Allison Smith to Speak to Asterisk IVR Users

August 06, 2008
By Greg Galitzine, Group Editorial Director

Allison Smith has one of the most recognized voices in the world. Sort of… The fact is people hear Allison’s voice all the time, but they have no idea who she is, or anything about her. Well starting today, anybody deploying an Asterisk-based phone system with IVR (interactive voice response) technology provided by Cepstral (News - Alert) will become very familiar with Allison’s voice.
 
Cepstral is a speech technology company, and they are building on their longstanding partnership with the Huntsville, AL-based creators of Asterisk to feature a brand-new IVR application designed to allow customers to use the world’s most widely recognized telephone system voice, that of Allison Smith, to customize messages and to mix dynamic information with recorded prompts in the same high-quality, user-friendly voice.
 
The Cepstral text-to-speech application affords developers the ability to mix pre-recorded Allison IVR prompts with informational messages; custom prompts; e-mails; dynamic information, such as appointment or account data; or any other English language text or files. This in turn allows companies to deploy Asterisk-based applications that do not require a mix of human-sounding and computer-generated prompts, all the while maintaining a high-quality experience.
 
Pricing for Digium’s (News - Alert) Cepstral Allison Voice Starter Kit starts at $79.99 for one port. Cepstral customers who are looking to replace or supplement an existing voice with Allison’s voice can purchase the kit for $29.99. The software is available directly from Digium, and of course Digium will provide support.
 
According to Digium’s vice president of product management Bill Miller, “Allison Smith’s voice is familiar to millions of people — nearly anyone who’s used voicemail or an IVR system knows her.”
 
“Cepstral’s technology is uniquely able to convey static and dynamic announcements using Allison’s voice, giving customers greater flexibility in how they can use Asterisk systems,” he added.
 
Craig Campbell, CEO of Cepstral, said: “By partnering with Digium to create a synthetic version of Allison’s voice, we’ve added the power of speech technology to further enhance the well known Asterisk brand. The ability to use computer automation to “say anything” in Allison’s voice provides a new tool for Asterisk developers and increases the capabilities and value proposition to customers.”
 
According to a press release announcing this news, Allison’s voice will greet users when they install any Asterisk release. In addition to offering a set of prerecorded Allison voice prompts, Digium announced a service to provide professionally recorded voice prompts, which allows customers to record uncommon names and atypical company-specific word combinations.
 
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Mark your calendars! Internet Telephony (News - Alert) Conference & EXPO is fast-approaching. It’s not too late to register for the event, which takes place in Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert), September16–18, 2008. The EXPO will feature three valuable days of exhibits, conferences and networking that you won’t want to miss. So what are you waiting for? Sign up now!
 
 
Greg Galitzine is editorial director for TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications suite of products, including TMCnet.com. To read more of Greg’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

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