Phone.com has announced they’re now supporting automated speech to text translation services. The new service would be slightly different than PhoneTag, which was purchased in 2009 by Ditech Networks, as PhoneTag is reportedly combining automated transcription with some level of human intervention to insure accuracy. Regardless whether its all automated or has some human help, more and more we’re seeing transcription services being an “add-on” to telephony based services. ZIPdx, a company in the conference calling space that is making it’s mark with g.722 conferencing added the same feature to their line of conference calling services back in January, 2010.
My view is that the GoogleVoice grade transcription only goes so far for the business user. Often times their transcription services leaves a lot to be desired, with some very obtuse “transcriptions” that are not even close to the message that was left by the caller. Many will also recall the decline of SpinVox, the UK company that raised a fortune, promised all kinds of successes and ended up being picked off by Nuance for peanuts compared to what was invested. SpinVox and PhoneTag have both demonstrated by their subscriber level interest that transcription of voice mail is wanted by a select group of people, and thus the entry into the market by Phone.com can be viewed as a way to differentiate themselves from other SOHO phone business focused providers.