What mobile applications are you working on for the bottom-of-the-pyramid
customers?
The Spoken Web is currently being piloted by the IBM India Research
Laboratory (IRL) team. It creates a web of voice sites, instead of typical
websites. People need only a telephone-mobile or landline-to create the voice
sites or to access them. This will enable the creation of significant new
content in the voice-enabled web portal that will help the bottom-of-the-pyramid
customers to get access to the services and products of the world at large.
When a user wants to create a voice site, he/she needs to call a number and a
software called VoiGen that helps the person to create a new site. The user can
upload voice content according to his/ her needs and is given a unique phone
number, analogous to a URL. When other users access the VoiceSite, they get to
hear the content given there. The VoiceSite, linked like website, creates a
parallel of world wide web. Considering the multi-lingual environment in India,
the technology avoids the use of speech recognition systems, and is based
entirely on spoken words.
When is Spoken Web likely to hit the market?
The Spoken Web technology is in pilot testing phase, and we have received
tremendous response from the users during these pilots. We are now looking for
various avenues, including partnership opportunities with services providers, to
take it to the masses.
What are the other areas of research you are working in the telecom space?
IBM IRL is working on various areas in the telecom, especially mobile,
including social network analysis, and its leverage in getting better business
insights. m-Commerce for the entire pyramid of customers, developing 4G assets
on multicore processors, and wireless network cloud that can reduce cost and
provide higher flexibility. Besides, we are also working on several other
projects that are expected to provide cutting-edge technologies to telecom
services providers.
What are the key challenges being faced while developing an application
for bottom of the pyramid?
The key challenges have been in understanding what these people really need,
what are their expectations from technology, what kind of user interfaces might
work for them. Another challenge was-what platform do we use? Considering the
lack of access to technologies and low penetration of Internet, we focused
entirely on mobile. With issues like low literacy and low per capita income in
India, we had to think of a technology, which has a simple user-interface, and
is economically viable for the masses.
Gagandeep Kaur
gagandeepk@cybermedia.co.in
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