28-06-2012, 05:50 PM
SPOKEN WEB
spoken web.doc (Size: 483.5 KB / Downloads: 30)
ABSTRACT
“The Spoken Web” is the vision of a Web for the billions of under-privileged that is parallel and complementary to the existing World Wide Web. The Spoken Web is referred as “World Wide Telecom Web”. The World Wide Telecom Web is also referred as “WWTW”, “Telecom Web” or “T-Web”. The World Wide Web (WWW) enabled quick and easy information dissemination and brought about fundamental changes to various aspects of our lives. However, a very large number of people, mostly in developing regions, are still un-touched by this revolution. Compared to PCs, the primary access mechanism to WWW, mobile phones have made phenomenal penetration into this population segment. Low cost of ownership, the simple user interface consisting of a small keyboard, limited menu and voice-based access contribute to the success of mobile phones with the less literate. However, apart from basic voice communication, these people are not being able to exploit the benefits of information and services available to WWW users.
The World Wide Telecom Web (WWTW) is vision of a voice-driven ecosystem parallel to that of the WWW. WWTW is a network of interconnected voice sites that are voice driven applications created by users and hosted in the network. It has the potential to enable the underprivileged population to become a part of the next generation converged networked world. A VoiNumber is a virtual phone number that either maps onto a physical phone number or to other uniform resource identifier. A VoiceSite is a voice driven application that consists of one or more voice pages (e.g. VoiceXML files) that are hosted in the telecom infrastructure. VoiceSites are accessed by calling up the associated VoiNumber and interacting with its underlying application flow, primarily through a telephony interface. A VoiLink is a hyperlink from one VoiceSite to another through which a caller interacting with the source VoiceSite can be transferred to the target VoiceSite in the context of the underlying application.
SPOKEN WEB
The Internet is one of the most significant technologies that have changed our daily lives in the recent past. This has been made possible through the numerous information sources and applications available over the World Wide Web (WWW). However the impact of the WWW is still not at the level of some basic facilities such as the railroad, electricity or even communications. There is a significant percentage of population that is still untouched by this revolution and are either unaware of or are unable to catch the momentum. Even today, barely 17% of the world’s population has access to the Internet. There are a variety of reasons that act as a hindrance for this technology to impact the remaining 83% section of the human population. Firstly, 53% of the world population lives below USD 2 per day – so they cannot afford a PC or high end phones and hence can-not access the Internet. Secondly, significant portions of the remaining 30% are illiterate and semi-literate people who do not know how to operate a computer. Thirdly, most of the information and applications available on the Internet is hardly relevant to this section of the society. However, for this technology to become a commodity such as a road or electricity, a significant shift in paradigm is needed. Incremental improvements in terms of the sophisticated services, advanced user interfaces, easier application authoring techniques for the WWW do not appear to be helping in providing a shift of such a large scale.
Interestingly, the telecommunication network does not face some of the challenges of the Internet world from an acceptance perspective. The cost of a phone is significantly lower than a PC and, the learning required to operate a phone is negligible as compared to a PC, especially when the phone is used as a device to communicate in free peech. Thus telecommunications have become a commodity for the common man and are a step closer towards achieving that status for the underprivileged as well.
The Spoken Web is the vision of a Web for the billions of under-privileged that is parallel and complementary to the existing World Wide Web. Though primarily meant for the under-served population in emerging economies, it has several applications for other segments as well.
The Spoken Web is referred as “World Wide Telecom Web”. The World Wide Telecom Web is also referred as “WWTW”, “Telecom Web” or “T-Web”.
A "Spoken Web" project, currently being piloted by IBM's India Research Laboratory (IRL), aims to take advantage of the rapid proliferation of mobile phones in emerging countries like India.
The Spoken Web technology will enable local communities to create and disseminate locally relevant content, and interact with e-commerce sites using the spoken word over the telephone instead of the written word.
Using technologies such as VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language) and HSTP (hyper speech transfer protocol), Spoken Web mirrors the World Wide Web in a telecom network where people can create and browse "VoiceSites" that have their own URLs (uniform resource locator), traverse "VoiceLinks", and conduct business transactions, according to IBM.
The technology is about a world-wide telecom web of VoiceSites, which can be thought of as websites accessible over voice, and which are situated on a telephony network rather than the Internet.
Users can access the voice-based web using a toll-free number, through a variety of ways including a voice recognition system or a tone phone. VoiceSites can be also created over the phone, using a set of templates on the server side.
The web of VoiceSites can potentially link to the World Wide Web, but the sites on the Web would have to be converted to support spoken interfaces, both via VoiceXML, and in how the content is designed and laid out.
The research lab expects its technology to be relevant to a variety of users looking for information and wanting to engage in transactions. These would include farmers who need to look up commodity prices, fishermen in need of weather information before heading out to sea, plumbers offering their services, and retail businesses like grocery shops that can list products, offer order placement, have personalized targeted advertisements, or set up reminders, IBM said.
Getting a Spoken Web up and running will however require the participation of a number of businesses and agencies including those offering financial services.
The researchers at IRL decided to focus on a voice-based web to address the information requirements of local communities because of the rapid proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries like India. Using PCs was also not practical because PCs cost more, and Internet penetration to most local communities is low. Most users are also not at ease with PCs and very often cannot read or write.
WWTW is a network of VoiceSites that are voice driven applications created by users themselves and hosted in the network.
WWTW is defined as an information and services space in which the items of interest, referred to as VoiceSites, are identified by global identifiers called VoiNumbers and maybe interconnected through VoiLinks.
A VoiNumber is a virtual phone number that either maps onto a physical phone number or to other uniform resource identifiers such as a SIP URI.
A VoiceSite is a voice driven application that consists of one or more voice pages (e.g. VoiceXML files) that are hosted in the telecom infrastructure. VoiceSites are accessed by calling up the associated VoiNumber and interacting with its underlying application flow, primarily through a telephony interface.
A VoiLink is a hyperlink from one VoiceSite to another through which a caller interacting with the source VoiceSite can be transferred to the target VoiceSite in the context of the underlying application. I
In this paper, present vision of a World Wide Telecom Web (WWTW) that has the potential to deliver to underprivileged, what WWW delivers to IT literate users today. Specifically, WWTW
• enables the underprivileged to create, host and share information and services produced by themselves,
• provides simple and affordable access mechanisms to let the masses exploit IT services and applications that are currently available to WWW users, and,
• provides a cost effective ecosystem that enables users to create and sustain a community parallel to the WWW.
Vision aims to exploit the features of the telecommunication channel for creating an information and services ecosystem for the masses in developing regions, as it can lead us to a completely different and a much powerful digital superhighway. The vision requires novel technologies ranging from user interfaces to infrastructure to be developed in order to enable such a paradigm shift.
A SCENARIO:
Ram is an electrician operating in the Shivadaspur area in the Varanasi town. His expertise lies in fixing house hold electrical problems of all kinds, except air coolers and air-conditioners. He cannot afford to have a shop of his own and his business depends on customers who know him by word-of-mouth. Recently, Ram bought a mobile phone, and started advertising his services in the Shivadaspur Yellow Pages. Since then, the business has started picking up. However, many times, while on a home call on duty, he is unable to accept calls, and this often results in losing new customers and upsetting old ones. One day, he finds out about a Create-your-virtual-shop service offered by his Telecom operator, and decides to sign up. He calls up the advertised phone number and creates his virtual shop as a VoiceSite in a matter of minutes by talking to this voice driven system. He also specifies reference information about previous customers and links to their phone numbers. Now the customers trying to reach Ram land up at this virtual hop and schedule an appointment with him while he is serving other customers. In addition, he adds links to the virtual shops of his friends who can take up the job in the event that he is unavailable at the time specified by the customer. Seeing Ram’s increasing customer base, the electrical shop owner in his area requests Ram to include a link to the electrical shop’s telestore (another virtual shop), where customers can place their orders which will be home delivered by the store. Customers can pay through their bank account or through one of the credit cards that have a tie up with store’s telecom provider. The payment happens safely through a voice driven interaction with the bank’s VoiceSite during the phone call, much in the same way as online transactions happen on the Web. This adds another customer facing channel for the electrical shop and adds to the services offered by Ram. Ram gets a percentage of the profits for customers reaching through his virtual shop and thus both Ram and the local store thrive with the use of Virtual Shop service. WWTW enables many such services that can be created to deliver IT services to the underprivileged in developing regions.
Relation with WWW
While the similarities of the T-Web with the WWW abound, we would like to highlight some of the key characteristics of T-Web, which are somewhat different from those of the WWW.
• Difference in Relation with Site Owner: We believe that a VoiceSite, one of the key artifacts of T-Web, acts as a proxy for the owner in more ways than website acts as a proxy in WWW. When one surfs a website, one doesn’t typically expect to talk to a person or representative. Whereas, the owner of a VoiceSite can receive an incoming call personally or let the caller interact with her VoiceSite. This makes the VoiceSite owner intrinsically connected to her VoiceSite. This could lead VoiceSites to have a profile comprising location, mood and several other real-time attributes that can appropriately represent the status of the person in real-life.