Making Inroads into Eastern Europe

This week Nuance Communications announced two “wins” that will make voice-based identification and verification (ID&V) more prevalent in two eastern European countries. Both involve subsidiaries of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom. On the 5th of July, Magyar Telekom, the successor to Hungary’s monopoly carrier, Matav. According to this report, the carrier has contracted with Nuance for licenses that can accommodate up to 20 million individual Magyar customers.

Like customers of Bell Canada and Turkey’s Turkcell (via contact center GlobalBilgi), Magyar’s subscribers say something akin to “”My voice is my identifier; it is simple and convenient” in order to carry out business tasks over the phone. The company can enroll up to five different individuals per phone line and thus overcome issues that arise when ANI (automated number identification) is not enough to provide certainty regarding the person at the other end of the phone line. In the era of competitive telephone services, Magyar vies for market share and mindshare with other Hungarian telecommunications companies, which are units of Vodafone Group Plc and Telenor ASA.

A week later, Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa S.A, which operates the T-Mobile network in Poland announced that it would be deploying Nuance’s VocalPassword software to support voice-based password reset services for its 4,500+ employees. In this case, the system will reduce the time and labor costs the company incurs by making it possible for employees to reset their passwords by saying a passphrase rather than engaging in discussions with Help Desk personnel. In addition to saving time, the automated system is available 24/7/365. T-Mobile’s primary competition is the former state-owned carrier, Telekomunikacja Polska S.A (aka Polish Telecom or PTSA). It is majority owned by the French telecom company, Orange.