Voice and text messaging-a concept to integrate the services of telephone and data networks

A concept is proposed for a voice and text messaging (VTM) system, which can integrate the distinct services of the telephone and data networks very quickly. In Taiwan the telephone network has very wide coverage and a large number of users, while the data network has very limited number of subscribers, because they have to possess a terminal. The core of VTM described is a Chinese text-to-speech system which can transform any Chinese text processed in the data network into Mandarin voice for transmission over the telephone network. The telephone network users can key in their instructions such as choice of information, text processing, forward and backward skipping by pressing the touch-tone buttons of the telephone set. The electronic mail and database information services provided by the data network therefore become a portion of the voice mail and message services provided by the telephone network. A large number of telephone network users, even without a terminal, can be served by both networks.<>