Secure, hands-free mobile e-services: ET Voice Ltd to use TESPAR to bring reliable word recognition and speaker authentication to mobile telephony

Citation

(2000), "Secure, hands-free mobile e-services: ET Voice Ltd to use TESPAR to bring reliable word recognition and speaker authentication to mobile telephony", Sensor Review, Vol. 20 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2000.08720dab.005

Secure, hands-free mobile e-services: ET Voice Ltd to use TESPAR to bring reliable word recognition and speaker authentication to mobile telephony

Secure, hands-free mobile e-services: ET Voice Ltd to use TESPAR to bring reliable word recognition and speaker authentication to mobile telephony

Keyword Telecommunications

A breakthrough in the development of easy-to-use and secure e-services on mobile phones using word recognition and hands-free speaker verification is imminent following ET Voice's acquisition of the worldwide exclusive rights to use Domain Dynamics' TESPAR technology in mobile phone handsets. ET Voice Ltd, a subsidiary of European Telecom plc, plans to market a word recognition application this calendar year with further applications including a speaker authentication module to follow. ET Voice believes that the technology, which can be incorporated and operated independently in any mobile phone handset, could become a de facto industry standard.

"Hands-free speaker verification and word recognition have been the holy grail for secure mobile e-services, but until now the processing demands have been far too high for the harsh and restricted environments of mobile phones", said Warren Hardy, chairman and CEO of European Telecom and chairman of ET Voice. "We have been looking for a robust, reliable and portable technology capable of working in the typically noisy environments of mobile telephony. We want to incorporate speaker authentication and word recognition in handsets economically and yet still leave processing power for other types of functionality. TESPAR has been a revelation to us – it succeeds in combining all these stringent requirements and doesn't force us to compromise on ease of use, security or portability. We are eager to get this solution to market and believe that handsets incorporating TESPAR technology will become the de facto global industry standard."

TESPAR is a widely applicable signal processing technology already well proven in speaker and word recognition applications. Existing Domain Dynamics' customers have shown that, using TESPAR, speech processing routines can be accommodated with very small demands for input power, memory and processing compared to other available technologies. TESPAR uses algorithms which require very little training time to recognise the sound of selected voices, words or numbers and performs well in noisy environments. TESPAR can also cope with varying speech speeds and pitches, and can accommodate both temporary and permanent voice changes.

For the first mobile telephony implementation, TESPAR will be used to provide effective small vocabulary word recognition suitable for hands-free use of the mobile phone. Accuracy is expected to be significantly better than that of existing products and the capacity of the personal voice directory will be at least doubled. It will no longer be necessary to activate word recognition by pressing the handset keys – speaking in an articulated but natural voice it will be possible to scroll through menus and to activate the dialling of directory entries and other commands.

"Conventional wisdom has it that the main challenge in implementing improved voice-activated technology in mobile telephony is the high memory requirement", continued Warren Hardy. "However, we at ET Voice believe that the real constraint is the discrimination of increasing numbers of words – to discriminate five words is relatively straightforward, but to discriminate even 20 words is exponentially more difficult because so many more variations are possible. We believe that, with TESPAR technology, we will be able to accomplish discrimination of higher numbers of words with ease."

Speaking of the broader applications of TESPAR, Ian Taylor, director of Domain Dynamics explained: "TESPAR so often succeeds where other technologies fail. It has been used for a very wide range of solutions from machine condition monitoring to perimeter security. In the telecoms area, Rotadata has a licence to use TESPAR in the automated testing of speech quality on telephone networks and we are currently working with EarthPort.com to provide additional security for its Internet-based payment system. Therefore, when we learned of the requirements of the mobile phone industry, we knew that TESPAR could provide a cost-effective and robust solution. We have been particularly impressed by ET Voice, their strategic insight and the speed at which they can produce and market a solution".

For further information contact Ian Taylor, Director, Domain Dynamics Limited, Heaviside Laboratories 12, Cranfield University, Shrivenham, Swindon SN6 8LA, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1793 782793; Fax: +44 (0)1793 782008; E-mail: ian.taylor@ddl.co.uk; Web site: www.ddl.co.uk