IBM’s India Research Lab has been working on a very interesting innovative project for the past couple of years called the Spoken Web project.
As its name suggests, the concept behind the project is to make information technology accessible to the developing world through a speech driven process. The lack of literacy in several parts of the world inhibits the spread of IT due to a major challenge posed by the inability to read the content.
This is where the spoken project breaks down the barrier. After a lot of analysis and understanding IBM Labs have provided a solution by comparing the growth factor of the mobile phone industry in developing countries.
The concept applied here is that although the common man cannot read/write, they can talk & listen. An interesting fact noted during this observation is that although the internet has penetrated 17% of the world’s population, the mobile phone has reached almost half of the world’s population.
With this vision the spoken web project had been created with the mobile phone as the access device and voice as the medium. This results in the overcoming of the following barriers to the common man who cannot read/write – no need for a PC/laptop/notebook and no need for a connection to the internet.
IBM has developed a new protocol — Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP) — which is similar to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which is the underlying medium for the project.
The key enabling technologies included in this project are as follows:
1. VoiGen – VoiceSite Creator
2. VoiHost – VoiceSite Hosting Engine
3. HSTP – Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol
4. WWTW Browser – World Wide Telecom Web Browser
An in-depth coverage of the above technologies can be found at the research project’s website. The spoken web is a network of voice sites conceived in late 2004 by Arun Kumar initially and joined by Nitendra Rajput later in mid-2005. The project has been in place since mid-2008. Some pilot projects have been implemented in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat in the form of Voikiosk and has met with significant success.
A brief preview about the technology can be viewed on YouTube. The spoken web project has found practical implementations in various sectors – business, healthcare, agriculture and public services. It would be interesting to see how this technology develops and what further implementations take place from here on. We would definitely hope to see it spread out to other developing nations as well.
Popularity: 94% [?]
