The IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO) today announced that the VoiceXML Forum has engaged its secretariat resources to facilitate its day to day activities. The VoiceXML Forum becomes the fifth industry group to organize as a program of the IEEE-ISTO.

The VoiceXML Forum, formed in March 1999, is an industry organization founded by AT&T, IBM, Lucent Technologies and Motorola. The Forum is chartered to establish and promote the Voice eXtensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) as a standard method for providing voice access to Internet content and services. The founding companies have contributed their respective voice and phone markup languages in creating the specification. The Forum membership, which now numbers 79 companies, is reviewing the specification before it is submitted to the appropriate body for formal standardization.

"Engaging the IEEE-ISTO to handle the VoiceXML Forum's day-to-day activities allows us to focus on what we do best: Developing technology," said Dan Furman, President of Lucent Speech Solutions. "They will help ensure that the Forum can be as responsive as possible in communicating with the industry."

Based on the World Wide Web Consortium's industry-standard extensible Markup Language (XML), Version 1.0 of the VoiceXML specification provides a high-level programming interface to speech and telephony resources for application developers, service providers and equipment manufacturers. Standardization of VoiceXML will:

• simplify creation and delivery of Web-based, personalized interactive voice-response services;
• enable phone and voice access to integrated call center databases, information and services on Web sites, and company intranets; and
• help enable new voice-capable devices and appliances.

Last year the group released the 0.9 version of the specification. Many companies have already begun implementing VoiceXML in their products and services, and a market for third-party application development has begun to emerge. The 1.0 version of the specification, currently being reviewed by Forum members, is now available to the public on the Forum's web site at http://www.voicexml.org.

About the IEEE-ISTO

The IEEE-ISTO is affiliated with the IEEE and the IEEE Standards Association. The IEEE-ISTO is an independent not-for-profit corporation offering standards-related industry groups an innovative and flexible operational legal forum and support services. The IEEE-ISTO facilitates the activities that support the development, implementation and acceptance of standards in the marketplace. In addition to the VoiceXML Forum, the 1355 Association, Nexus 5001 Forum, Medical Device Communications Industry Group, and Printer Working Group, are currently organized as programs of the IEEE-ISTO.

For further information about the IEEE-ISTO visit http://www.ieee-isto.org or contact Peter Lefkin, IEEE-ISTO secretary treasurer and CFO, at +1 732 981 3434, or ieee-isto@ieee.org. For further information about the VoiceXML Forum visit the Forum's Web site or call +1 732 465 6464.