Aculab provides digital signal processing resources for new fixed line short message service (SMS) i

Added: (Fri Nov 16 2001)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Milton Keynes, UK –15 th November 2001

Aculab, a leading provider of enabling technology for the communications market, has been awarded a contract by Deutsche Telekom AG to provide digital signal processing (DSP) resources for Germany’s new fixed-line short message service (SMS).

Deutsche Telekom’s new service enables fixed-line telephone subscribers to send text messages from their phones using SMS, already widely used on mobile phones.

“We chose Aculab’s Prosody DSP platform because it allowed us to develop a number of different premium rate services all based on Aculab’s generic API,” said Juergen Meyer, team leader of Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems Audiotex business unit, which has already developed some ten thousand channels of premium rate services for Deutsche Telekom as well as other carriers.

One of the key benefits of Aculab’s Prosody platform is that it provides developers with high-density speech and data processing in an extremely compact and flexible form. A single Prosody card occupying a single slot, for example, can deliver 256 channels of simultaneous DSP processing.

T-Systems will integrate Aculab’s Prosody PCI card into Deutsche Telecom’s fixed line central SMS Centre, where all fixed line SMS traffic is managed, switched and billed.

Aculab’s Prosody PCI card will be used to implement the front end router, which handles the incoming and outgoing traffic, extracting or generating the SMS information and sending faxes instead of SMS if required.

T-Systems first started using DSP resources from Aculab in 1998, when it was searching for a new speech-processing platform.

Deutsche Telekom’s fixed line SMS service enables subscribers to its T-DI mobile network to send text messages of up to 160 characters to fixed-line customers, and allows customers with compatible residential phones to send SMS from fixed-line instruments to Deutsche Telekom mobile subscribers or other SMS enabled landline customers. At a later stage, the landline text messages will be able to go to competing companies’ mobile networks, according to Deutsche Telekom.

Messages to landline customers without an SMS-enabled phone will be read over the phone by a synthesized voice. Subscribers to Deutsche Telekom’s voice mailbox will receive them as ordinary voicemail messages.

Commenting on the announcement, Chris Gravett, sales and marketing director of Aculab, said: “This is an extremely important contract for us, and we’re delighted to have been able to support Deutsche Telekom in deploying this innovative solution for such a rapid growing sector.”

About Aculab

Through a customer-focused approach to development, Aculab has produced a computer telephony (CT) product portfolio that satisfies the speech resource and global digital connectivity requirements of developers and system integrators. CT applications utilising Aculab’s components can handle real-time telephony, through an extensive range of resources and signalling systems.

The evolution of Aculab’s generic API, to provide a consistent programming interface, reduces the integration time of a combination of technologies including text-to-speech (TTS), automatic speech recognition (ASR), conferencing and fax. Collectively through supporting a broad range of industry standards and operating systems, Aculab can provide the products needed when quality and performance cannot be compromised.

Aculab’s head office is located in Milton Keynes, UK with offices in North America, Germany and Australia. Website: www.aculab.com

For more information contact:
Katie Chaplin
Aculab
Telephone: +44 (0) 1908 273 800
Email: mailto:katie.chaplin@aculab.com

Tracey Williams
TWPR
Telephone: +44 (0) 1225 723237
Email: mailto:twpr@compuserve.com