(openPR) Swisscom Voting Platform Powered by CreaLog
Zurich/Munich, April 2011 – Switzerland has got a new "supertalent". Maya Wirz, the highly likable bus driver from Aargau, conquered the hearts of the audience thanks to her wonderful vocals. No fewer than 1.2 million TV viewers watched the live final of Switzerland's Got Talent – and several hundred thousands voted by phone or by text for their favorite stars. All these votes were received and registered via TeleVote 2.0, Swisscom's new mass calling platform. With 9,600 lines, the largest set-up of its kind in Switzerland, this state-of-the-art voice recognition platform was installed by CreaLog, the Munich-based voice-portal specialist.
Interactive TV formats popular everywhere
A look over the border to Germany confirms the great pull of interactive formats for TV and radio stations. Programs such as the Eurovision Song Contest, Germany's Next Top-Model and Wetten dass (a variety show with challenge games) regularly achieve top ratings. It's obvious that viewers of all ages, and not just the younger ones, like to intervene in proceedings and vote for their favorite candidate by telephone or text message.
Swisscom to push for more interactive program formats
The completely new televoting platform behind the audience participation formats is helping Swisscom boost the all-round appeal of radio and TV programming. The CreaLog solution ensures that each and every phone call really does count in any interactive show broadcast.
Simon Marville, project manager at Swisscom for
TeleVote 2.0, commenting on the main improvements offered by the new televoting platform, said: "What's new is the convergence factor enabling the TV viewers to interact on an equal and simultaneous basis using standard communication channels such as the telephone, text & picture messaging and the internet. We also reduced the technological complexity of the way this solution operates and we can even blend in the various individual statements that the candidates deliver to their fans."
The VoiceXML platform has other advantages too. When the broadcaster is transmitting a prize game, for example, its staff can use the web browser to monitor the calling patterns in real time and respond to the audience at any point. The winners and/or phone callers can be put through to the presenter at the mere click of a mouse. Plus which, during actual transmission, the staff can use the web interface as developed by CreaLog to streamline the voting processes.
Technology networked nationwide
The specialists from Swisscom and CreaLog, working closely together, set up and integrated 40 server systems in a fixed and wireless network with 9,600 lines and installed 20 application servers at the data centers operated by Swisscom. Advanced Sonata IP networks link the 12 separate locations in Switzerland and thus facilitate nationwide TV voting for the hundreds of thousands of phone calls and texts that come in during the short time windows inherent to the program format.
Swisscom thrilled with the success of the new platform
Daniel Isenschmid and Simon Marville, the managers of the 70-strong Swisscom project team, said how agreeable and cooperative the work with CreaLog had been, pointing out that "in just seven months, the CreaLog technicians succeeded in doing everything required to ensure that votes could be cast and processed on the new platform without a hitch".
A look into the near future
The next step will see the platform expand to take in announcement and acoustic functions (for example net changing) across the entire Swisscom network. In addition, existing announcement and information applications (including wake-up calls, floral tributes, stock exchange prices, horoscope details and traffic news) will soon be integrated into the new platform.
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About Swisscom
Swisscom is Switzerland's leading telecoms provider, with around 5.8 million mobile customers, over 421,000 Swisscom TV customers and 1.6 million broadband connections (retail). In 2010, the company's 19,547-strong workforce (FTEs) generated revenue of CHF 11.98 billion. Swisscom has a presence throughout Switzerland and offers a full range of products and services for mobile, landline and IP-based voice and data communication. Massive investments in network infrastructure ensure that this will remain the case in the future. With Swisscom TV, customers too have become increasingly aware of the trend towards multimedia. Swisscom is active in one of the most attractive broadband markets in Europe via the Italian provider Fastweb. Swisscom also offers services for IT infrastructure outsourcing as well as the management of communications infrastructures.
About CreaLog
A cutting-edge company with all the best references, CreaLog is the leading vendor for interactive multimedia solutions and speech dialog systems across 29 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. CreaLog offers a fully web-administrable CreaLog Voice XML media server as the next-generation platform for voice and video applications, as well as the CreaLog application server framework.
CreaLog solutions operate with a total of approx. 55,000 installed lines at more than 400 clients in over 30 branches of industry. The product portfolio for telcos and value-added service providers includes multimedia solutions for customer care (IVR & contact center and voice self services), business services (mass calling for TV/radio, hosted IVR & contact center and conferencing) and telco consumer services (Voice2Text, ringback tone, mobile payments and assisting IP). Voice Portals from CreaLog ensure the highest standard of dialog quality on the basis of natural language speech recognition. The portals are able to recognize and intelligently process a large number of words and whole sentences in 44 languages. CreaLog portals also support human-sounding synthetic-speech systems from the world's leading providers.
In 2005 and 2006, CreaLog Voice Portals for voice self services, contact centers, unified communications and CTI solutions for telecos and corporate customers won Best of CeBIT Awards for the Interactive Voice Video Response and CreaVoice FAQs. In 2009, CreaLog also won the Voice Contest Silver Award for ELVIS, the voice-controlled internet radio for mobile devices. Telco references include Vodafone, Telekom Austria TA AG and Unitel / Angola as well as Swisscom and Sunrise in Switzerland.
