news out on PFVI AND Time Warner Telecom
To: Currency (9 )
From: Madeleine Harrison
Monday, Jan 11 1999 8:29AM ET
Reply # of 14
Monday January 11, 7:29 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Preferred Voice Completes Initial
Collocation Installation With Time
Warner Telecom to Become the First
to Deliver Speech Recognition Services to Any Phone
Through a Central Office Network
DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 11, 1999--Preferred Voice, Inc. (OTC BB:PFVI)
announced today the successful installation of their voice integrated platform with the
Time Warner
Telecom Lucent 5ESS switch in Tampa, Florida.
Time Warner Telecom is an independent, privately held company offering fiber,
facilities-based
integrated communications services to business customers in 19 U.S. cities. Time Warner
Telecom
was formed in June of 1993 as a partnership of U.S. West (NYSE:USW - news) and
Time
Warner Cable.
This collocation arrangement with Time Warner Telecom enables Preferred Voice, Inc. to
offer its
complete family of proprietary speech recognition services, including the company's
''Virtual
Business Line™'' which supplements existing hard wired local telephone company
business and
residential lines, and ''Emma TR™'' (Telephone Receptionist), the first central office
based,
remote access, automatic answering attendant. Using speaker independent speech
recognition
technology, Emma answers your phones, routes your calls, dials your long-distance calls
and
performs call accounting. Emma will be introduced in the Tampa area for $19.95 per
month.
To activate Emma, the subscribing company simply call forwards their primary telephone
company
number to Emma and Emma does the rest. Emma is remotely located which eliminates
the need for
businesses to purchase or install any additional equipment or software at their location.
Emma TR
can work as an inexpensive full-time answering service 24 hours a day or as a back-up
answering
point. To hear Emma in action, call the Preferred Voice corporate office toll-free at
1-800-390-6478 and say ''Rick Stone''.
''Our goal is to provide the highest quality services that are affordable to small and
medium size
businesses as well as families nationwide,'' said G. Ray Miller, President and Chief
Executive
Officer of Preferred Voice, Inc. ''Time Warner Telecom is exactly what we needed to
assure our
customers of leading edge technology in providing quality services today and well into the
next
century.'' The Preferred Voice, Inc. local calling footprint in the Tampa area includes
Tampa,
Clearwater, Sarasota, St. Petersburg, and Orlando.
''Speech recognition is an emerging technology that may offer Time Warner Telecom
customers
added value,'' said Bob Meldrum, director of marketing at Time Warner Telecom. ''The
Preferred
Voice agreement gives us a window on this emerging marketplace and an opportunity to
evaluate
various service protocols to determine what may fit our model of providing integrated
communications solutions.''
Miller said: ''Our 1999 plans include collocating with Time Warner Telecom in all 19 of
their
switch cities.'' The additional switch cities are: Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas;
Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Charlotte, Greensboro, and Raleigh, North Carolina;
Honolulu,
Hawaii; Indianapolis, Indiana; New York City, Albany, Binghamton, and Rochester, New
York;
Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Memphis, Tennessee; Orlando, Florida and San Diego, California.
Miller
also added that the company is currently negotiating with other CLEC's in areas not
serviced by
Time Warner Telecom.
Preferred Voice, Inc. developed their Voice Integrated Platform (VIP) as a modular PC
Windows
NT system, which combines the company's proprietary software with the technology and
algorithms developed by Dallas-based Voice Control Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ
NMS:VCSI -
news). VCS is the telecommunications industry's largest supplier of speech recognizers
with over
2.5 million deployed in over 30 countries worldwide.
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These are risks and uncertainties
that
could cause actual results to differ materially for a variety of reasons, including but not
limited to,
the introduction of competitive products and services by companies with far greater
financial
resources than Preferred Voice, Inc., and/or the ability or failure of Preferred Voice, Inc.
to raise
the additional capital necessary to install its platforms in other cities, the inability of the
Company to
attract distributors, and the possibility that there are other products and services on the
market, or
being developed now to enter the market, of which the Company is not aware.
Contact:
Preferred Voice Inc., Dallas
Rick Stone, 214/265-9580
or
Equity Communications
Ira Weingarten, 805/897-1880 |
