VON: AT&T Labs shows off latest VoIP conferencing technology

AT&T Labs opened its doors a little at the VON Spring 2005 conference in San Jose to demonstrate some of its IP-based conferencing prototypes that may some day become commercial products.

Among them is AT&T Enhanced VoIP Controller, desktop and server software that can set up conference calls and send out reminders to members - pretty standard stuff.

The technology can also transcribe the conference call using speech-to-text software, reproducing the conversation with about 85% accuracy, AT&T claims. This can be done without training the software to understand individual speakers, even if they have accents and are calling on bad connections.

Users can use Enhanced VoIP Controller to search the text for key words to find just the part of the conference they want and read the transcript. The software maps the text to an audio record of the call and users can identify the part of the transcript they'd like to hear, click their mouse and hear that segment of the conversation.

This enables people to quickly find pertinent parts of conferences, browse the transcript and then verify its accuracy by actually listening to key parts, AT&T says. While the call is being played back, what is being said can be displayed on a computer screen as text as each word is spoken, effectively creating closed captioning of the conversation. Listeners can speed up or slow down the replay to get to the parts they want to hear sooner.

The conference host has the ability to mute individuals, and can also split the conference in two, putting some of the members in one group to discuss one topic and another set of members in another to discuss something else. The host can jump back and forth to participate in both groups and merge them back into a single conference.

AT&T says it plans to roll out an IP conferencing service this fall that will include some but not all of these features.

The company is also showing a desktop application for tying together all of a user’s phones - desktop, cellular, home, IP phone, etc. Based on SIP, the software can signal a server to ring all the phones at once, ring just the one where the user has registered that they are present, or ring them sequentially until the user is found. It can also screen calls and send them to voice mail.

The desktop application has a click-to-dial feature that can set up video phone calls as well and add extra parties to create conferences. The application can also transfer calls.

The application can move a call from phone to phone without dropping a connection. So people talking on their cell phones can arrive at work and move the call to their desk phone when they get to their office. The server connects to the desk phone and then bridges the calling party to both phones. The call stays active on both phones until the user hangs one up.