Tellme Networks, Inc. was an American company founded in 1999 by Mike McCue and Angus Davis,[2] which specialized in telephone-based applications. Its headquarters were in Mountain View, California.
Tellme Networks was acquired by Microsoft on March 14, 2007, for approximately $800 million; the deal closed in late April 2007.[3] In 2006, Tellme's phone network processed more than 2 billion unique calls.[4]
Tellme established an information number which provided time-of-day announcements, weather forecasts, brief news and sports summaries, business searches, stock market quotations, driving directions, and similar amenities. Operating by voice prompts and speech-recognition software, it was set up in 2000 as a loss-leader service to demonstrate the Tellme functionality to U.S. consumers. The voice of the Tellme service is Darby Bailey.[5]
In early 2012, Microsoft divested itself of Tellme Networks' interactive voice response (IVR) service and the majority of its employees to 24/7 Inc.[6] The service was moved to a non-toll-free number.
History
In April 1999, the Tellme founding team, consisting of Mike McCue, Angus Davis, Rod Brathwaite, Jim Fanning, Kyle Sims, Brad Porter, Michael Plitkins, Hadi Partovi, John Giannandrea, Andrew Volkmann, Anthony Accardi, Patrick McCormick, Danny Howard, Vicki Penrose, and Emil Michael assembled in Mountain View, California.
In 2000, Tellme announced a service that delivered content to telephones—a concept called voice portals. Early competitors included TelSurf Networks, BeVocal, Hey Anita, and Quack.com. Quack.com was founded in 1999 and acquired in September 2000 by America Online for its competing service, AOLbyPhone. At least ten additional competitors appeared in 2000 in various attempts to mimic the funding success of Tellme.[7]
In 2008 the company debuted a feature especially for Christmas Eve; callers can hear recorded messages from Santa Claus. If called on Christmas Eve, Santa will say what state he is traveling over, and exactly what he is doing. In 2009 they added a service that allows you to receive messages from Santa a week early which explain what he is doing to prepare for Christmas.
At the onset of service, as a way to gain more users, they offered a free long-distance call feature called Phone Booth. Callers would call Tellme and were given 2 free minutes of long-distance call time to their desired phone number. That service was later stopped while other services persisted.
Services
Voice portal customers build Internet-powered, voice-enabled applications on the Tellme Network using Tellme Studio. Tellme Studio is a web-based VoiceXML development tool. The Tellme platform is based on open standards like VoiceXML, CCXML, and VoIP. The Tellme Voice Portal which includes directory assistance used to be accessed by calling (800) 555-TELL (8355).[10] When Microsoft sold Tellme to 24/7 Inc in 2012, the number changed to the non-toll-free (408) 752-8052, rebranded as The Information Line.[11] In September 2019, the service was revamped and rebranded again as Voice Info, with once again a toll-free number (866) 895-3124,[12] however this number was deactivated in July 2020.[13] The old Microsoft Bing 411 1-800-CALL-411 number can now be used to access Voice Info by pressing 9 when connected. AT&T Wireless customers can access Voice Info directly by dialing *8 (formerly #121).[14]
An automatic number announcement circuit (ANAC) is a component of a central office of a telephone company that provides a service to installation and service technicians to determine the telephone number of a telephone line. The facility has a telephone number that may be called to listen to an automatic announcement that includes the caller's telephone number. The ANAC facility is useful primarily during the installation of landline telephones to quickly identify one of multiple wire pairs in a bundle or at a termination point.
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telephony, IVR allows customers to interact with a company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition, after which services can be inquired about through the IVR dialogue. IVR systems can respond with pre-recorded or dynamically generated audio to further direct users on how to proceed. IVR systems deployed in the network are sized to handle large call volumes and also used for outbound calling as IVR systems are more intelligent than many predictive dialer systems.
Caller identification is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is being set up. The caller ID service may include the transmission of a name associated with the calling telephone number, in a service called Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). The service was first defined in 1993 in International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.731.3.
VoiceXML (VXML) is a digital document standard for specifying interactive media and voice dialogs between humans and computers. It is used for developing audio and voice response applications, such as banking systems and automated customer service portals. VoiceXML applications are developed and deployed in a manner analogous to how a web browser interprets and visually renders the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) it receives from a web server. VoiceXML documents are interpreted by a voice browser and in common deployment architectures, users interact with voice browsers via the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the telephone country code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate with the NANP.
411 is a telephone number for local directory assistance in Canada and the United States. Until the early 1980s, 411 – and the related 113 number – were free to call in most jurisdictions.
A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number from a landline is free of charge. A toll-free number is identified by a dialing prefix similar to an area code. The specific service access varies by country.
In telecommunications, directory assistance or directory inquiries is a phone service used to find out a specific telephone number and/or address of a residence, business, or government entity.
A Zenith number was a telephone service in the United States that allowed a calling party to call the service subscriber at no charge by requesting the name Zenith and the number from a switchboard operator. The service preceded the system of toll-free telephone numbers with area code 800 in the United States. Some areas used the names "Enterprise" or "WX" number.
SpeechWorks was a company founded in Boston in 1994 by speech recognition pioneer Mike Phillips and Bill O'Farrell. The Boston-based company developed and supported speech-related computer software. Originally known as Applied Language Technologies, SpeechWorks went public in 2000 and tripled its value. It was acquired by Scansoft in 2003. ScanSoft acquired Nuance in 2005, and changed its name to Nuance Communications.
Bing for mobile is a search tool for handheld mobile devices from Microsoft as part of their Bing search engine. It is designed for mobile device displays. Bing Mobile is built into Windows Mobile and Windows Phone as proprietary software, accessed via the Search key on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices. It is also available on Windows Phone 8.1, and can be downloaded for other platforms, including and Android.
Voice portals are the voice equivalent of web portals, giving access to information through spoken commands and voice responses. Ideally a voice portal could be an access point for any type of information, services, or transactions found on the Internet. Common uses include movie time listings and stock trading. In telecommunications circles, voice portals may be referred to as interactive voice response (IVR) systems, but this term also includes DTMF services. With the emergence of conversational assistants such as Apple's Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and Samsung's Bixby, Voice Portals can now be accessed through mobile devices and Far Field voice smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home.
Phone sex is a conversation between two or more people by means of the telephone which is sexually explicit and is intended to provoke sexual arousal in one or more participants. As a practice between individuals temporarily separated, it is as old as dial telephones, on which no operator could eavesdrop. In the later 20th century businesses emerged offering, for a fee, sexual conversations with a phone sex worker.
GOOG-411 was a telephone service launched by Google in 2007, that provided a speech-recognition-based business directory search, and placed a call to the resulting number in the United States or Canada. The service was accessible a toll-free telephone number. It was an alternative to 4-1-1, an often-expensive service provided by local and long-distance phone companies, and was therefore commonly known as Google 411. This service was discontinued on November 12, 2010.
Skype offers a number of features based around calling, messaging, video chat, and file and screen sharing. The following is a partial list of Skype's features:
800-The-Info was a toll-free directory assistance (DA) and information service provided in the United States by Verizon. 800-The-Info was subsidized by businesses that purchase advertising space on the service. Callers did not pay for the service, but had to listen to ads. The service offered local business listings including numbers and addresses.
Quack.com was an early voice portal company. The domain name later was used for Quack, an iPad search application from AOL.
1-800-FREE-411 is an American service offering advertising-supported 7272777931, operated by Marchex.
Toll-free telephone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan have the area code prefix 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, and 888. Additionally, area codes 822, 880 through 887, and 889 are reserved for toll-free use in the future. 811 is excluded because it is a special dialing code in the group NXX for various other purposes.
Darby Bailey is an American actress, Ph.D. candidate, Information Technologist, voice-over artist, musician, songwriter, writer/producer, and businesswoman. She is most known as the 'Voice of Tellme' and the voice of Verizon and AT&T's 4-1-1 Directory Assistance. Her voice has been heard trillions of times by telephone callers in the U.S. since she first started voicing phone systems in 1999.
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