Hyderabad, June 8

If researchers at IBM India Research Labs (IRL) have their way, the innovative features they have developed for mobile phones will help people access services using speech interface.

Alongside, the software designed at IRL will help people with mobiles find plumbers, carpenters and, possibly, even doctors located nearby.

The Director of IBM IRL Director, Dr Guruduth Banavar, said the research work related to mobile phones seeks to empower people, who have no access to personal computers, with the means to surf the Web using speech.

The research work is part of the Mobile Web Initiative, which is being led from India and incubated in other IBM Labs, and includes the Spoken Web — voice-enabled mobile commerce.

The Spoken Web Project, piloted in India, aims to facilitate Web access with speech interface. It is the World Wide Web equivalent in a telecom network where people can browse voice sites. This bypasses the need for a PC and illiteracy.

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