SPEECH DESIGN, the leading European provider of value-added solutions to wireline and wireless network operators, has successfully implemented Germany’s first Visual Voicemail service in cooperation with Vodafone. In addition, the innovative “Call Completion Suite” also boosts the number of successful connections by providing intelligent notifications of all failed call attempts to both callers and the called parties. Vodafone Germany is one of the largest mobile network operators in Germany and Europe, currently serving over 34 Million subscribers.

Visual Voicemail is rapidly gaining recognition as the future standard for delivering voice messages to mobile users. Traditional voicemail systems require the users to call a central number and retrieve voice messages sequentially by pressing buttons in response to spoken instructions. Visual Voicemail totally eliminates this cumbersome procedure by “pushing” the messages directly to the customer’s mobile handset. The message list is presented in an “e-mail-like” inbox with the callers´ names and numbers, for easy playback at the user’s convenience.

Unlike more restricted proprietary approaches to Visual Voicemail, the SPEECH DESIGN implementation utilises the standard MMS protocol for message delivery, making it compatible with almost all current handset models. “Innovation is crucial for Vodafone as a leading mobile operator, and the Vodafone "Visual Mailbox" is a genuine revolution in the German market. Dialling into the mailbox and sequential message retrieval is a thing of the past – now subscribers receive their voice messages conveniently via MMS for instant playback, storing, forwarding, and other intuitive one-click options.” Jan Martens, CEO, SPEECH DESIGN, describes the service, which has already received industry acclaim for its levels of innovation and usability:

“This service is unique in Germany and is a real improvement on conventional voice and touch-controlled mailbox systems. The "Visual Mailbox" from Vodafone shows current mailbox systems to be outdated and cumbersome – a market advantage which will attract greater customer loyalty.” notes Current Analysis in its “Competitive Intelligence Report Europe”:

But not only voice mail users benefit from the new call completion features. “Intelligent notification services greatly improve the reachability of subscribers who don’t use a mailbox.” explains Jan Martens. “All the calls that would have been lost previously are now detected, and both callers and the called parties are offered easy-to-use options which quickly lead to a successful connection. In addition to improved reachability for the customers, from the carrier perspective the network efficiency and the overall call completion rates are significantly increased. We are extremely pleased by Vodafone Germany’s decision to select SPEECH DESIGN as its partner for this innovative, large-scale deployment. We believe SPEECH DESIGN now has the largest Call Completion base in Europe, installed at some of the Continent’s biggest carriers”.