also remember the LHSP and GTE agreement back in Dec /98
LERNOUT & HAUSPIE AND GTE FORM ALLIANCE; L&H; Licenses
BBN HARK Recognizer™ Large Vocabulary Speech Engine; GTE
Internetworking's BBN Technologies Licenses L&H; Technology
Inclusive ASR, TTS and Compression
BURLINGTON, MA -- Dec. 3, 1998 -- Lernout & Hauspie (NASDAQ:
LHSPF; EASDAQ: LHSP.ED) (L&H;™), today announced that it has
entered into an alliance with GTE Internetworking's BBN Technologies
division in which it will have perpetual rights to license and further develop
the BBN HARK Recognizer large-vocabulary speech recognition engine
and toolkit. BBN Technologies will also license from L&H; a full range of
speech technologies, including the company's recently introduced next
generation L&H; RealSpeak text-to-speech (TTS) technology that
produces high quality, human-sounding synthesized speech.
The BBN HARK Recognizer is a high-accuracy, large-vocabulary engine
that will give L&H; and its customers the capability to design high-end
telephony applications and address the rapidly growing demand for
speech-enabled offerings among telephony vendors. The agreement also
calls for L&H; and BBN Technologies to embark on a multi-year
Research & Development initiative. Under the terms of the agreement,
L&H;, a worldwide market leader in speech and linguistic technologies,
products and services, will gain perpetual rights to the BBN HARK
Recognizer engine and toolkit source code for $5million. BBN
Technologies will license L&H; RealSpeak, its newest TTS technology
that produces a human sounding voice, and represents a breakthrough in
terms of voice quality and intelligibility. BBN Technologies will also
license other technologies from L&H;, which enable electronic equipment
to:
Recognize natural and fluently spoken words, continuous digits,
isolated words, keywords and the alphabet in multiple languages,
a technology known as automated speech recognition (ASR);
Convert any computer readable text into natural-sounding speech
based on in-depth linguistic understanding in multiple languages,
a technology called text-to-speech (TTS);
Significantly reduce the size of voice and audio files for
transmissions and storage while maintaining high quality, known
as speech and music coding (SMC).
L&H;'s family of ASR products includes the ASR 200, a small-vocabulary
recognizer for use in automotive and consumer electronics applications,
and the ASR 1500 and ASR 1600 engines, phonetic speaker
independent recognizers designed for embedded computer, multimedia
and telecommunications applications.
"This relationship is central to our strategy of forming alliances with
industry-leading product companies to extend the market reach for our
stand-alone speech technologies while we continue to grow our R&D;,
applications, and embedded solutions business," said Phil Paul, senior
vice president of GTE Internetworking BBN Technologies. "L&H;, with its
global presence in the speech market is an outstanding company to
deploy some of our technologies. Conversely, we will rapidly integrate
their products such as the RealSpeak TTS engine with our solutions
throughout GTE and to our customers. The alliance will also fuel
continued improvements in speech technology for the benefit of
customers of both companies."
"By licensing the BBN HARK Recognizer large vocabulary speech
recognition engine we can significantly reduce our time to market for
high-end telephony applications and more quickly meet the demand for
speech in the telephony market overall," said Gerald Calabrese,
president of L&H; Core Speech Technology Division. "This strategic
alliance with GTE will strengthen our position in the telephony market
which is, according to industry analysts, one of the fastest growth
opportunities in the speech industry."
According to TMA Associates, an industry analyst group based in
Tarzana, California, the market opportunity for speech technology in the
telephony industry was $42 million in 1997 and is expected to grow to
$1.06 billion by 2002.
"BBN, as a long-time participant in the government's DARPA research
program, has world-class speech technology. The agreement should
make Lernout & Hauspie a strong competitor in 'natural-language'
telephone speech recognition, and should help BBN in extending its
technology to other languages," stated William Meisel, president, TMA
Associates.
The BBN HARK Recognizer is a commercially proven, open
client/server-based speech recognition system. It supports a large, active
vocabulary comparable in size to other engines in the market today. The
HARK engine is scalable, enabling companies to expand speech
recognition applications as their requirements grow. It is currently
deployed in commercial and government applications and R&D; projects.
L&H; expects to use and resell the engine for development of automotive
applications such as navigation systems and, in particular, for the high
growth, high end telephony applications including call centers, operator
services, automated attendants and IVR platforms.
GTE Internetworking's Speech and Language Processing group has been
a leader in performing advanced research and development of speech
recognition and associated technologies for nearly three decades. Prime
focus areas have been in speech recognition, natural language
understanding, text processing, and optical character recognition. These
advanced technologies are often transferred to products in the Speech
Solutions group which custom speech-based solutions to the commercial
marketplace, including call center, central office telephony, and
automotive environments. To support these products GTE Internetworking
also offers a full range of professional services.
GTE Internetworking, is a division of GTE Corp. (NYSE: GTE). This
division offers customers a full spectrum of integrated Internet services
using IP networking technologies, including dial-up and dedicated Internet
access, Web hosting, managed Internet network management, systems
integration, and Web-based applications development for integrating the
Internet into business operations. Essential to GTE Internetworking are
its R&D; capabilities, which provide effective solutions for implementing
faster, more effective and more cost-efficient ways to use the Internet.
For more information visit www.bbn.com.
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (L&H;) is a global leader in
advanced speech and language solutions for computers, automobiles,
telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the
Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the
keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and
technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down
cultural barriers. L&H;'s products and services originate in four basic
areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital
speech and music compression (SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For
more information, please visit Lernout & Hauspie on the World Wide Web
at www.lhs.com.
This press release contains forward-looking information, including
statements regarding L&H;'s plans, objectives, expectations and
intentions. Such statements include, without limitation the evaluation of
the BBN HARK Recognizer and it's value to the market, discussions
relating to the expected integration, completion of development and
commercial introduction of certain products. Readers are cautioned that
such forward- looking statements involve risk and uncertainties, including,
with limitation, the risk that the company or one or more of the
companies licensees will not successfully complete the development of
these products on a timely basis, if at all, that the technologies will not
perform as anticipated, that L&H; or BBN will chose to use alternative
technologies, and the general risks associated with the intense
competition and rapid technological change characteristic of the speech
technology markets. The forward-looking statements are also subject to
risks set forth in L&H;'s reports filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak
only as of the date of this Report. L&H; expressly disclaims any
obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to
any such statement to reflect any change in L&H;'s expectations or any
change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such
statement is based.
All product names and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of L&H;, BBN
To Top | Home | About GTE Internetworking | Products And Services | Customer Support | Site Map
webmaster@bbn.com | © 1999 GTE Internetworking | Legal | Net Abuse | Privacy Policy
|
