Putting speech recognition to work in the telephone network

The use of speaker-independent speech recognition in the development of Northern Telecom´s automated alternate billing service (AABS) for collect calls, third-number-billed calls, and calling-card-billed calls is discussed. The AABS system automates a collect call by recording the calling party´s name, placing a call to the called party, playing back the calling party´s name to the called party, informing the called party that he or she has a collect call from that person, and asking. ´Will you pay for the call?´ The operation of AABS, the architecture of the voice interface, and the speech recognition algorithm are described, and the accuracy of the recognizer is discussed. AABS relies on isolated-word recognition, although more advanced techniques that can recognize continuous speech are being pursued.<>