BELL ATLANTIC NYNEX MOBILE DEBUTS UNIQUE VOICE DIALING SERVICE, TALKDIAL

Bedminster, NJ — For Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile customers who use the company's new TalkDial(sm) service, dialing their cellular phones will be as easy as thinking out loud. TalkDial is the first service to use breakthrough error detection and correction technology for state-of-the art voice-activated dialing that is the industry's most intelligent and accurate.

TalkDial debuts today in Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile's northern New England and Upstate New York markets. Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile will roll out the service to its other markets along the East Coast throughout the spring.

"This service effectively answers the call of customers who want the convenience and added safety of voice-activated dialing, especially for cellular phone use while driving," says Ray Dolan, executive vice president - marketing for Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile. "Now, customers can more easily conduct their business and personal matters without having to remember or look for frequently-called telephone numbers and manually dial them into a keypad."

TalkDial uses the software of Atlanta-based Intellivoice Communications, which uses technology unsurpassed by other voice -activated systems in use today. Unlike these other technologies, the Intellivoice system does not require customers to wait for a tone between each spoken digit of a phone number, making the dialing process faster and easier. For even faster processing, customers do not need to enter their personal identification number (PIN) when calling a name programmed in their directory, since the PIN is automatically included when storing a phone number.

TalkDial also features a user-friendly interface -- customers are not required to use commands, such as "call" or "dial," that are common in other systems and can lengthen the time it takes to initiate a call. In addition, Intellivoice's proprietary error correction technique creates a speech recognition profile for each individual subscriber, which accurately predicts and activates the number to be dialed.

"Our primary objective has been to dramatically improve speech recognition in the mobile environment because customers have made it clear that accuracy and ease of use are absolute requirements," says Jim Szyperski, president of Intellivoice. "We are delighted that Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile, a pioneer in wireless technology, has expressed confidence in our product and in our ability to deliver the most comprehensive voice-activated service platform available in the industry to date."

To activate the service, the user presses the "*" and "send" buttons, which prompts the word "TalkDial." The customer then recites the desired telephone number or says a name/place they've stored in their personal directory, such as "office," and the number is automatically dialed. In addition to speaking a number or name from the directory, the caller can say "directory" to program numbers, or "help" to listen to a user-friendly tutorial. Customers who use PIN Codes have the option of speaking the code or entering it on the keypad. Finally, because the service is based out of Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile's switching office, subscribers can use any type of cellular phone with no additional equipment.

TalkDial service is available for a monthly fee of $2.99 in Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile's northern New England and upstate New York regions.

Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile has been conducting a commercial trial of Intellivoice's system since May of last year in Albany, N.Y. While results of the trial are proprietary, its success provided the platform for Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile to begin a wide-scale offering in all markets.

With more than 3.4 million customers, Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile is the largest wireless service provider on the East Coast and the second largest provider in the US. Headquartered in Bedminster, NJ, the company offers a full range of wireless voice, data, and paging communications solutions to its customers in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and, through a separate subsidiary, in the Southwest. Formed in July 1995 through the combination of Bell Atlantic Mobile's and NYNEX Mobile's cellular operations, the company has more than 5,000 employees.

Intellivoice Communications, Inc., founded in 1988, is a leading systems integrator and developer of Voice Activated Services applications for both cellular and wireline telephone company operating environments. Intellivoice is headquartered in Atlanta, GA, with R&D facilities in Farmington Hills, MI. Over the past eight years, Intellivoice has successfully delivered products that support a broad range of speech recognition enabled applications including Directory Assistance Call Completion, Voice Activated Dialing, Voice Mail Access, and Speaker Verification.

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