Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!telecom-request From: zellich@stl-07sima.army.mil (Rich Zellich) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Convenience of Phone System? Message-ID: Date: 11 Apr 91 15:38:45 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 38 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 285, Message 5 of 10 > Wouldn't it be nice to simply speak into the phone and say 'my friend > Tony Jones's third office line please', and from the random pay phone > be voice recognised as you and thereby indicating which Tony Jones is > being refered to. Take a look at X.400 e-mail "addresses"; that's why all those fields are in there. The general idea is to allow future Directory-Service lookup on fields likely to be known to you (name, organization, country, etc.). There's no reason you can't do something similar with telephone "addresses". All you need is a black box with the requisite smarts, or a phone-board in your personal computer. It will require a fair amount of intelligence in the software to not only recognize spoken words, but also to parse them into something meaningful to the system's directory-search algorithm, but it's certainly doable (though perhaps very expensive) right now. If I can have an e-mail alias file with entries like "jff2" (an old NIC Ident) and "oscteam", then I can certainly do the same thing with a telephone-system alias file. Perhaps the future will even allow [inter]national directory lookup as well; my opinion is that it would be to the phone companies benefit to provide easy and *free* directory lookup in the interest of generating more per-call revenue. I don't know about "from any random pay phone", though. Perhaps when computing power gets a bit cheaper we'll be able to use something like a Casio BOSS with a voice-recognizer and a tone-generator built in, and use the hand-held device to do our dialing for us. Actually, we can do that now (but without the voice-input capability, of course), *very* cheaply with a shirt-pocket dialer with a name-number memory and a simple lcd-screen interface. [Moderator's Note: We have 'alias addresses' to a limited extent now with the speed-calling function offered by most telcos with an ESS office. A long distance carrier who also offers 'alias addresses' is Telecom USA. As part of their Calling Card service, when on their switch, *90 allows you to program up to nine (*91 through *99) 'speed numbers' when using their switch for your long distance calls. PAT]