Need to check flight arrival information? Looking for movie showtimes? Are you hungry and want to call for take-out? With an ever increasing number of mobile phones in use, the demand for fast, intuitive information services are growing daily. Maybe it’s scores for the big game; maybe it’s local weather; or maybe it’s hotel information. Regardless of the specific information, cell phone users are using their devices as sources of information more than ever — which means there is a demand for information service providers. By using your phone, not only do you gain access to information, but often, you are able to complete a transaction all in one step — to order pizza for dinner, for instance. You also will receive your information without having to take your eyes off the road, creating a safer driving environment.

 

Offering just such a service with a focus on flexibility, scalability, and reliability, Tellme Networks responds to queries from some of the largest companies in the world using, enabling millions of people to receive answers to their daily inquiries when they call any of the 3,000 different applications running on Tellme’s platform.

 

Tellme Networks has announced that, each month, more than 100 million voice-driven searches are completed by its platform — from 35 million unique users. While these searches include anything from food orders to sports updates, the majority are for business listings to 411 business searches on Tellme — driving directions, in particular, are extremely popular, used by more than half of Tellme users.  Indeed, an estimated 2.1 billion business searches are made annually to 411 from mobile phones, making it the search method of choice today. In fact, according to recent research, the convenience of being able to search using voice commands is the most important consideration in mobile search adoption.

 

Naturally, some people aren’t aware of mobile information services, and others prefer to do things the hard way. A recent Harris Interactive study showed that those people can get rather creative as the track down information while on the go.

 

According to the study, the top — and more mundane — alternatives for finding phone numbers while driving are: calling a family member (58 percent), calling a friend (46 percent), actually stopping at a phone booth (29 percent), and calling a work colleague (27 percent).  Among the more creative measures were: booting up a laptop computer in the car (7 percent), tearing a page out of a public phone book (7 percent), and driving around to find a wireless hotspot to access the Internet (5 percent).  

 

While it might be nice to chat with Mom for a few minutes, or it might be good to find out what’s happening at the office from a colleague, wouldn’t it be considerably easier to simply dial a service and request the information, via voice, and then have the information supplied to you, along with follow-up options? That’s what Tellme’s open standards-based platform provides, along with 99.995 percent uptime and the flexibility and scalability to handle more than 10 billion voice expressions annually.

 

“Voice is easy and fast, which solves two of the biggest challenges with mobile search today.  The requirements for mobile search are very different than those of Web search.  In a mobile environment, people demand speed and accuracy, with as little typing or scrolling as possible.  They are looking for specific kinds of information, usually location-based, such as a restaurant or driving directions.  And they want to be able to act on the information instantly, by either calling or using the data to make a decision, like which road to take or which movie to see,” said Sanjeev Agrawal, Vice President of Product Marketing at Tellme.  “Having served billions of answers to millions of callers, we believe now is the time for Tellme to take its expertise in voice search to the world of mobile data search.”

 

Anyone can try Tellme voice search services today. Information and entertainment searches are available on 1-800-555-TELL, *8 from Cingular (News - Alert) Wireless phones, or by saying “Call Web” for Sprint (News - Alert) Voice Command users.  To reach a business call 1-800-555-1212, and for listings plus enhanced services like driving directions and movie ticketing, Tellme powers much of Cingular’s 411 services.

 

------