The way we were: speech technology, platforms and applications in the `old´ AT&T

The last several years have been an exciting time at AT&T in the field of advanced speech applications for telecommunications: technical progress and platform/processor advances have enabled the identification, development and testing of a range of new services. During this period AT&T brought together, under a single corporate roof, a research laboratory committed to advancing speech technology, business organizations building platforms to leverage this technology for telecommunications applications, and yet other business organizations with responsibility for deploying speech enabled services to facilitate the use and reduce the cost of telecommunications services for both consumers and businesses. While this period of our corporate history has drawn to a close, we look back to provide an overview of how technical progress, platform advances and network services needs and opportunities interacted to make speech technology an everyday experience for millions of people, and some of the lessons we learned along the way