Voice biometrics gains beach head in Canada
Bell, Canada’s largest communications provider, installs spoken pass phrase from Israeli company PerSay as the universal identifier for customer support
Voice biometric is in its infancy, but it is most suitable for e-commerce applications and, more generally, to a world in which wireless devices of all types are becoming ubiquitous. We note, therefore, that at SpeechTEK, the voice solutions conference and exhibitions being held in New York as we write, Ra’anana, Israel-based PerSay will demonstrate how its VocalPassword technology powers Bell’s Voice
Identification service
Bell, the largest communications provider in Canada, has installed a spoken pass phrase as the universal identifier for customer support in five of its service segments (wireline, wireless, high-speed Internet, digital TV, and VoIP). The company offers voice-identification enrollment as an alternative to PIN-based services and manual authentication methods.
PerSay VocalPassword was selected for the Bell project in September 2006 and roll out began in March 2007. As of yesterday, Bell reported more than 275,000 voluntary enrollments. “The primary driver for Bell in implementing a voice verification system was to make privacy protection more convenient for Bell customers,” explained Charles Giordano, marketing lead for Bell’s voice authentication project.
