AT&T and Vlingo to Bring Innovative Speech Recognition to Mobile Devices Worldwide

AT&T’s Watson Speech Recognition Technology to Help Provide Users Control of Mobile Applications Via Power of Their Voice

Florham Park, New Jersey, In an effort to provide mobile device users an easier and more natural way to control their applications, AT&T* and Vlingo today announced a licensing agreement and strategic alliance to incorporate AT&T’s Watson technology into Vlingo’s speech-enabled applications. The alliance will drive innovation in user interfaces by allowing people to use the power of their voice to create and send a text message or email, search the Web, access social networking tools and more, making data services more accessible and convenient to use. As part of the alliance, AT&T will take a minority equity stake in Vlingo.

“AT&T’s Watson technology provides a world-class speech recognition engine in both performance and features,“ said Charles Kalmanek, vice president of networking and services research, AT&T Labs. ”By allowing users to speak naturally, Watson opens the door to a wide range of innovative new services that are easy and natural to use.”

Added Dave Grannan, president and CEO, Vlingo: “This agreement represents a unique opportunity to work with AT&T to deliver a revolutionary speech recognition solution to the market. Natural and unconstrained voice recognition user interfaces represent the next major breakthrough for the mobile industry as well as many other industries. Based on our evaluation, we have seen significant accuracy and performance gains with Watson compared to other core speech technologies that will allow us to create a dramatically improved user experience. We look forward to deploying our joint solutions throughout the industry.”

A leader in speech technology for decades, AT&T is a pioneer in voice-enabled services and has developed hundreds of voice applications deployed throughout our advanced telecommunications network. AT&T’s Watson speech recognition technology includes the latest advances and innovations in the field of speech and language processing with a rich set of tools for custom development and adaptation of acoustic and language models. In addition to Watson, AT&T’s suite of speech technologies also includes AT&T Natural Voices, an award-winning text-to-speech product that converts text into voice for a wide variety of applications.

Vlingo is a Cambridge, MA-based startup focused on unlocking access to mobile data applications with speech recognition technology that lets people control their mobile applications with the power of their voice. Vlingo’s current iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia applications enable customers to simply speak to their phone to create and send a text or email message, search the web, update their Facebook status and more, making data services more accessible and easy to use. Millions of iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia customers have downloaded Vlingo’s current application suite.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About Vlingo
With Vlingo, users can instantly send a text or email message, call a friend, search the web, update their Facebook or Twitter status and more by just speaking into their phone. As the inventor of the mobile phone “voice user interface,” Vlingo is the only technology that allows people to use virtually any application on the phone simply by pressing a button and speaking to the phone. Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo! and AT&T and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, go to www.vlingo.com.

About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s fastest 3G network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet and voice services. AT&T offers the best wireless coverage worldwide, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verseSM and AT&T | DIRECTVSM brands. The company’s suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world. In domestic markets, AT&T’s Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations are known for their leadership in directory publishing and advertising sales. In 2009, AT&T again ranked No. 1 in the telecommunications industry on FORTUNE® magazine’s list of the World’s Most Admired Companies.

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