Global Service Introduction
In 1979, a voice-mail service company Televoice International was founded in California by Paul Finnigan, Dow Brian and Paula Paige. The company was subsequently issued a trademark for “Voice-mail” and changed its name to Voice-mail® International (VMI).http://www.uspto.gov search voice-mail, serial#73275916 Finnigan and Brian had their first experience with voice-mail in 1978 at Microform Medical Systems when they integrated voice technology with the DEC PDP-11 used by their Laboratory Information System, allowing physicians to retrieve patient test results using a touch tone telephone by simply entering the patient's bed number followed by the test code such as "CBC" for Complete Blood Count.
In May 1980, VMI introduced the first nationwide voice-mail service from its headquarters in Santa Clara, CA using a Digital Equipment PDP 11 with proprietary voice technology called the "Big Talker".Business Week-Information Processing–August,1981-page90F. Subscribers recorded and retrieved messages by calling a nationwide 800 number using a touch-tone phone (a rotary telephone required use of a hand-held touch-tone keypad supplied by the company) to enter passwords, select send or receive and other service options. In situations where these options were either unavailable or unsuccessful, callers were automatically connected to a live operator who made entries for the caller. This feature was especially important since touch tone phones were not prevalent in the U.S. and almost non-existent in Europe during this time period.
VMI positioned Voice-mail® as an enhancement to the rapidly growing paging and mobile telephone market, providing enhancements that improved the service and reduced cost by automating the delivery of messages. Intrastate Paging in Los Angeles CA and RadioPhone in Newark, NJ were the first to introduce the mobile/paging/Voice-mail® services.Wall Street Journal,February 10, 1982–page10. When a caller’s message was recorded, the subscriber was notified by page alert that a message was waiting. Eventually a number of additional Radio Common Carriers (RCC) and several Telephone Answering Services introduced Voice-mail® services. RCA Global's Radio Page America and GTE.Management Information System Week,Sep 1984-GTE Voice-mail Debuts. brought industry wide credibly to voice-mail as a global communications service.
Voice-mail® service was provided from company owned centers in Santa Clara CA and Los Angeles CA as well as licensed centers in Denver, CO, Cleveland, OH and Portland, OR. Due to the high cost of storage for individual messages, VMI and its licensees followed a business strategy focused on time-critical deliveries of messages to large groups. VMI integrated its service with private and public computer data bases, developing a unique method of using the digital information to select words and phrases from a pre-recorded voice library and concatenating them into a natural sounding voice response. These so-called Audiotex and Interative Voice Response (IVR) services delivered voice information and transaction services for wide range of applications.
The challenges included the high cost of voice storage systems, the lack of touch tone telephones, particularly in the international market; and the complexity of integrating the voice-mail platform with paging systems and corporate computer databases. However, a single message could be delivered to thousands of subscribers and users quickly and efficiently using page alerts and the service resulted in significant cost reduction when compared to conventional operator staffed call centers. A single voice-mail® system could handle tens of thousands of calls simultaneously and was designed to meet telecom performance and reliability standards. Service providers were able to expand from voice messaging to major IVR applications, that changed the whole approach to information delivery.
During the period 1983 to 1987, VMI developed many "break through" IVR applications included both business and consumer related solutions: Stock Quotes for Dow Jones; Flight Schedules for Pacific Southwest Airlines; Drug Interactions for Physicians’ Desk Reference; Crew Scheduling for Trans World Airlines;San Francisco Examiner,February 7, 1982–Page 9. Actor Casting Calls for Universal Studios; Filming Schedules for ABC TV; Athlete Scheduling for the 1985 Summer Olympics; "The Talking Bouquet for Florafax; Order Taking for Quervo Gold advertisements; and many more. .AFIPS Conference Proceedings-1983 National Computer Conference. Many of these applications were introduced using VMI's service centers and then migrated to company operated platforms. By the late 1980s, Audiotex and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) techniques pioneered by VMI became global standards for businesses communications.Data Communications,November 1986–Audiotex: The Telephone as Data Access Equipment.Modern Office Technology,March 1986–Voice Soars at TWA.
In 1983, Radio-Suisse (later taken over by Swisscom) introduced the first Voice-mail® service in Europe. The VMI platform was integrated with paging services that provided notification throughout western Europe.Radio-Suisse magazine-CONTACT,January 1983,page 12. By 1985, Voice-mail® was offered by British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom and Voice-mail Swenska and the company eventually secured licenses for thirty Voice-mail® centers in twelve countries.Fortune Magazine-September 30, 1985-Corporate Performance–Voice-mail International Japan was the first to introduce Voice-mail® on the Pacific Rim.Nikkei Industry Newspaper,June 11, 1985–Promising Voice-mail VMI was responsible for worldwide introduction of voice mail as an efficient and cost effective way to deliver messages and information by telephone.Information Week,July 1985-Use it While you’re in, not out. Voice-mail® systems were ultimately fluent in American, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. Many of the IVR applications pioneered by VMI in the U.S. were equally successful in the international market. In 1987, VMI’s new management attempted to shift the company’s business from the service industry to the corporate enterprise market. The strategy was unsuccessful and in 1991 the company discontinued operations.
The voice-mail service market in the U.S. grew quickly in the mid to late 1980s and several manufacturers began offering messaging services. Comverse became the leading supplier for messaging services with Telephone Answering Services (TAS) and VMX formed a Tigon subsidiary that offered messaging services from a service center in Atlanta. GA. A number of other companies, including Voice Response Inc. followed VMIs lead in developing IVR applications. The 1988 Judge Greene decision regarding the Bell Operating Companies would change everything for the U.S. service market as described under BOCs and PTTs, later in this article.
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