Who Provides Voice Portals?
The voice portal industry is still emerging, with business plans changing fast
and the prospect of mergers and shake-ups ahead. Today, start-up voice portal
companies, Web portals, and network service providers typically provide voice
portal services.
Start-up Voice Portal Companies
These companies' basic business is building, hosting, and marketing voice portal
services targeted to particular audiences. An example is HeyAnita*, whose voice
portal provides a different mix of information services directly to businesses
and consumers. HeyAnita debuted its services in the fall of 2000.
Web Portals
A second kind of provider is a traditional Internet portal looking to extend its
reach over the phone. For example, AOL recently purchased Quack.com* to allow
people to access AOL by telephone. It's easy to understand the advantages of
voice enabling a Web portal. As Kathy Kinney, MapQuest* Director of Business
Development, told the Wall Street Journal: "As a dot-com, our reach was limited
to those who got to the Internet through some type of techie device. We looked
at the phone service and said 'Holy cow, this is the way we can reach the
neighbor across the street through the phone in her kitchen that she's been
using all her life.'" (Wall Street Journal*, June 20, 2000)
Network Service Providers
The third major category of voice portal service provider is telecommunications
or Internet service providers (ISP). These providers are looking to build
customer loyalty and maximize network usage with branded portal services they
host in the network or obtain from third-party suppliers. For example,
Talk2.com* is partnering with wireless companies that want to add value to their
packages.
Telera*, Netbytel*, and iBasis* are all examples of hosting service providers
that allow ISPs and start-up voice portal companies to extend enhanced services
using voicewithout having to build and maintain the technology infrastructure.
The ISP does not need to be an expert in a particular technology or application
like speech recognition or telecommunications. Instead, the ISP can concentrate
on launching new services and growing its business. These hosting service
providers are all based on Intel technology, which allows them to scale and
change to meet an ISP's growing needs. In short, an ISP can select the
best-of-breed application that fits its business model and stay focused on
attracting and locking in customers, not on maintaining technology.
Wall Street Journal*, June 20, 2000
* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.