Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 15 Mar 2004 16:38

In an Australian first, Telstra today introduced talking SMS messaging to fixed phone lines.

Telstra Mobile post-paid and pre-paid customers can now send Talking TextTM messages to most Telstra fixed home and business phones. The service converts the text into speech and reads it to the person answering the fixed phone, who will soon be able to choose to reply from a series of simple, pre-set text responses.

Telstra Mobile and fixed phone customers pay no extra monthly fee for access to the Talking Text service and fixed phone customers pay no charge to listen to Talking Text messages.

Telstra's Consumer Segment Head, Jenny Young, said "Telstra customers don't have to do anything to get onto the Talking Text service  they don't need to buy any new equipment, place an order or pay an access fee".

"Our mobile users send more than 100 million SMS messages a month and now our fixed phone customers can be part of the phenomenon.

"Text messaging is ideal in many situations, for instance when you don't want to say something out loud or want to send a message quickly without getting caught up in a conversation. People also like sending text messages just because they're fun and spontaneous.

"The computer-generated, female voice reading out the message sounds natural and clear. The service can even recognise many of the symbols and abbreviations used to represent words in text messages." The voice of the messages is singer Karen Jacobsen (pictured above) www.karenjacobsen.com

“We’ve started off with a woman’s voice, but in the future we’ll be looking at adding male and even novelty voices,” Ms Young said.

Karen Jacobsen put in 50 hours of recording before computers analysed her voice for the basic phonetic units of human sound - phonemes. These were used to create more than half a million synthetic sounds for the computer-generated voice of Talking Text TM messages - dubbed Speechify Karen.

Karen Jacobsen was born and raised in Mackay, Queensland but now lives in New York City.

The ability to receive Talking Text messages has been added to most Telstra fixed phones, but customers can cancel the service.

Telstra Mobile customers sending a Talking Text message to a Telstra fixed phone are charged at their standard SMS rate.

How Talking Text messages work

When a Talking Text message is delivered, the fixed phone rings as usual. The person answering hears a message advising they have an SMS. If they choose to listen, the Talking Text service reads the message.

If no-one answers the phone when the message is delivered, Telstra's technology saves it to a compatible MessageBank® or Telstra Home Messages 101TMservice, or to most other answering services. Otherwise, the Talking Text service keeps trying to deliver the message at regular intervals for seven days, or people can dial a special access number to see if they have messages waiting to be delivered.

By default messages will not be delivered between midnight and 8.00am but people can customise the service to have messages delivered 24 hours a day.

www.telstra.com.au/talkingtext