ications protocols. However X.25 is a particularly popular 4. Automated attendant. technique due to the flexible nature of the data communications network and the software support in mainframe computers. Typi- Analysts value the European voice processing for 1994 at £300M. cally used in home banking applications, this technique allows This clearly shows dramatic uptake in the European voice process- simpler systems to be realised. ing equipment over the next three years, and to a large extent mirrors More advanced systems in the IBM system environment use LU the growth in the US that has occurred already. 6.2 and distributed database enquiries based on Standard Query Language (SQL) techniques. Voice response systems have to readily speak numbers to callers. 37.1.2 Audiotex systems In order to facilitate this, and because of the limited vocabulary needed, the speech may be stored in the voice processing systems Audiotex systems are used to publish spoken information to callers. semiconductor memory (RAM). The words are brought out of Callers can interact with audiotex systems using DTMF tones, dial memory by using a microprocessor and presented to digital to pulses, by speech power detection (grunt detection), or in more analogue converters. This reduces the load on the system compared advanced systems by using Speech Recognition. with taking such speech from disk and hence makes the concaten- Many applications are currently available ranging from weather ation of numbers easier to achieve without recourse to specialist forecasts, games and contests, medical advice. disk controller hardware and software. These services can be accessed by the public using special tele- As an adjunct to this feature, some voice response systems have phone numbers. These numbers are tariffed at a premium over text-to-speech capability. For example this is used to speak item normal call rates; hence the term 'premium rate services' The descriptions to callers from a stock list. It is considered impractical revenue from these calls is 