[ORANGE] Wildfire letter

[Scott Allison]

Ian Tindale wrote:
> 
> I'm not a "Wildfire" user, and have hardly any awareness of what it
> was or how I would find it useful, beyond that which I'm picking up in
> these current threads.
> 
> How would you promote the service to me, if it were a new product now?
> (I'm not a car driver btw).

It's a voice activated and fully interactive messaging service which
(could) encompass voice, fax and email. ALthough on Orange it only did
voice and fax?

I found some info squirelled away on my pc about it from 1999.

1999-02-09: 
USA: Lexington, Mass., Firm to Market Voice-Mail Software in
Britain. (Globe(Massachusetts)) 

By Ross Kerber, The Boston Globe.

Feb. 9-Take a message, luv?

Sophisticated voice-mail software made by Wildfire
Communications Inc. hasn't drawn more than a few thousand
customers in the United States. So the Lexington company is
taking its product across the Atlantic in the hope that British
mobile-phone users will rave about its ability to understand
speech.

The goal is to sign up 250,000 customers to use Wildfire's
services by the end of the year, through its partnership with
London-based wireless phone provider Orange PLC.

Bringing in a quarter-million British customers would give
Wildfire one of the largest early deployments of
speech-recognition technology to date. So far, these systems
have made only limited public appearances in airline
reservations systems and in directory assistance services.

Wildfire's chances for success now depend on how well the
company has programmed its software to speak and to
understand the queen's English.

"People's acceptance of this is a social issue," say Rich Miner,
Wildfire's chief technical officer. "It's almost as if you were
moving a play from one country to another."

Added Yankee Group telecommunications analyst Mark
Lowenstein, consumers in every country "have a very limited
tolerance for machine-like speech." Before they accept voice
recognition, he said, "It has to sound natural."

Wildfire's software allows telephone customers to use voice
commands to dial calls, send faxes or listen to messages. The
program also serves as an electronic assistant, forwarding calls
and keeping lists of frequently called numbers.

Wildfire needs deals with telecommunications providers like
Orange to popularize its program. Orange, for its part, hopes
Wildfire's features will make its mobile-phone services more
appealing to consumers, who might increase their total airtime
and their bills as a result.

The alliance took an important step yesterday when Orange
began testing Wildfire's voice-mail services with 5,000
customers, selected to provide a sampling of accents from Fleet
Street to Glasgow.

Their reactions will help polish British Wildfire for general
deployment later this year.

"The hardest thing is to detect all the different regional accents,"
says Wildfire's Miner. "There's everything from formal English,
what's called BBC English, to accents from the north and the
south."

Wildfire engineers installed an Anglo vocabulary, including
instructions for callers to hit the "hash" key rather than what is
known here as the "pound" key. The program also refers to the
"in-tray" rather than the "in-box."

Programmers also used the voice of an actress who speaks
informally. According to Wildfire's casting-call material, the
voice is that of a woman around 30 years old whose accent is
"Middle English. Definitely not BBC English or upper class,"
with no regional accent. "It's a voice that we've exhaustively
tested ... so nobody will mind it," says Orange spokesman John
Carter.

The Orange alliance represents a strategic retrenchment for
closely held Wildfire, whose software hasn't become as popular
as some had expected when it was introduced in 1994. Then,
Wildfire planned to market its service to large businesses and
through distributors.

But costing between $150 to $200 a month, the software never
gained more than a niche following. Competitors like
California-based General Magic have also struggled, though
that company just announced an alliance with software giant
Microsoft Corp.

To broaden its appeal, last summer Wildfire began negotiating
deals with phone companies directly. In September, it signed a
licensing agreement with Canadian telecommunications
provider BEC Mobile Communications Inc., parent of
Toronto-based cell phone company Bell Mobility. In December,
Wildfire also announced an agreement with Pacific Bell
Wireless, a unit of SBC Communications Inc.

Under those agreements about 5,000 people use Wildfire today.
The company's president and chief executive, Dan Hoy, says
Wildfire hopes its agreements with Orange will increase its
customer base by hundreds of thousands - and triple company
revenue by next year.

Wildfire doesn't disclose its current revenue or say whether it is
profitable. But the firm's software has drawn investments from
Intel Corp. and Microsoft, among others. Hoy says he expects
the firm will grow to 140 employees within nine months from 70
today.

Hoy was named to head the firm last December, replacing
Robert G. Mechaley Jr., who resigned to move to Seattle.

Yankee Group's Lowenstein said Wildfire's new strategy seems
promising. But he had expected that the company would have
reached agreements with more than three cell phone providers
by now, he said.

"It's not because their product isn't ready, but rather because
the wireless carriers have a lot of things on their plate,"
Lowenstein said. "Introducing this type of service is not
necessarily a priority for them."

Wildfire's Hoy says the company is in talks with "virtually every
signficant mobile phone" provider and expects to announce
more licensing agreements soon. Wildfire spokeswoman Leslie
Anderson also said that some planned announcements have
been delayed by industry mergers.

Customers of PacBell and Bell Mobility currently pay about $20
extra a month to receive Wildfire services. Hoy said the British
deal differs in that Orange plans to offer Wildfire at no additional
cost to subscribers. The company expects the feature will boost
consumers' demand for airtime.

Next, Wildfire has developed French and Italian versions of its
service that it will make available in partnerships with
telecommunications firms in those countries soon, Hoy said. The
firm also plans to develop versions of its software in two more
languages, perhaps Spanish or a Far Eastern tongue.




-- 
Scott Allison, FREEDOM MOBILES LIMITED
Web:  http://www.freedom-mobiles.co.uk
Tel:  0845 330 8280 Fax: 0871 433 8774