PhoneRun, Lucent to Market Mobile Internet Service

Companies continue to roll out voice portal technologies as an alternative access mechanism to the Internet. (see Speech Recognition Services Abound). The latest is a joint effort by PhoneRun Inc. (Boston, MA) and Lucent Technologies Inc.(Murray Hill, NJ) to market a mobile Internet service called phonecasting—modeled after television and radio broadcasting. It provides a media network of Internet-sourced audio channels for news, entertainment, and shopping available to any telephone via voice-enabled technology known as voicetone. The service will run on Lucent's Mobile Communications System (MCS).

The technology allows callers to customize their service and direct it with simple voice commands. Users can choose among such audio channels as news, weather, scores, traffic updates, stock updates, horoscopes, lottery results, restaurant guides, books-on-tape, CEO speeches, and live sporting events.

MCS includes a public switched telephone network (PSTN) gateway, interactive voice response (IVR) system, VoiceXML browser, Internet gateway, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and short message service (SMS) interfaces, e-mail delivery and notification, and distributed network management system. It is certified to meet or exceed all telecommunications carrier-class standards for operating equipment. It meets all quality and safety specifications for the United States, Europe, and worldwide, including Bellcore GR-1089-CORE, NEBS, and EMC.

The Boston-based startup will announce its content, carrier, and e-commerce partnerships in the coming weeks.

Edited by Ellen Jensen