Sending text messages via mobile has led to the development of a new form of shorthand - and little wonder. Even nimble-fingered, loquacious youths are inhibited by the mobile phone keypad and the size of the display.

This would appear to limit the appeal of accessing the internet from mobile phones - which suppliers and operators must persuade us to do if they are to sell the higher-value data services that are possible on more advanced networks.

Fortunately, advances in voice recognition over the past 18 months mean this technology is now robust enough to provide a means of accessing a full range of services, according to Simon Edwards, European marketing director of InterVoiceBrite (IVB), a provider of voice recognition systems to telecommunications operators.

Customers will be able to use mobile commerce, entertainment, information, banking and other services by talking, rather than pressing buttons.

The main driver is the falling price of processing power. "Some of the techniques have been around for some time, but given the amount of processing power required, they have not been economic," says Mr Edwards. "Despite this, voice recognition remains expensive, so the application has to be right."

One live application that demonstrates the power of IVB's technology is the Eva information service run by the German mobile operator E-Plus, based in Dusseldorf.

Eva provides access to 60 different content sources. However, before a recent upgrade to IVB's Omvia technology, users needed a different phone number for each one.

Now they dial a single number, and when answered by Eva, can give voice commands to have text-based content from news, sport, traffic, weather, financial data, and other websites, read out to them.

"The information is read in a real human voice, rather than in android tones," says Mr Edwards. (Customers who want to put a face to the voice can look at Eva's picture on the E-Plus website - unsurprisingly, she's a young blonde).

A feature called intelligent barge-in allows users familiar with the service to go direct to the service they require, rather than waiting for a menu to be read to them.

In IVB's in-house demonstration, the voice answering the phone says, "This is Omvia, how can I help you?" giving those versed in the system the opportunity to request the phone number of the nearest taxi company, or the latest share price of a particular company.

According to Mr Edwards, Omvia brings all IVB's voice products into a single, scalable architecture. A common web interface allows users to navigate seamlessly from one information or service source to another.

They can access and reply to voice, fax and e-mail messages, manage their phone accounts, and order and pay for goods and services, from any location, on any device simply by talking.

Omvia can be applied to second-generation (2G) mobile networks, as in the E-Plus example, but Mr Edwards says: "You will be able to obtain more sophisticated responses as the networks increase in bandwidth."

IVB is based in Dallas, Texas, but it is the more advanced European mobile market that has driven the development of Omvia, and most of the work was carried out at the company's European headquarters in Manchester.

IVB is talking to all its large European telco customers, including BT, Stet, KPN and Deutsche Telekom, about applying Omvia. In the short term, Mr Edwards believes it will enable them to build customer loyalty and reduce the high level of churn on mobile networks.

Revenues

"In the longer term, it will help them to extract a return from the huge investment in licence and infrastructure costs of third-generation networks, by pushing up revenue per customer," he says. Omvia has another attraction, as it provides operators with the tools to build detailed customer profiles.

Omvia will also be available on an Application Service Provider (ASP) basis. "There is a severe skills shortage, which will drive the market for managed voice recognition on 3G networks," adds Mr Edwards. "Telcos want to offer these services, but they don't want the expense of recruiting their own people to provide them."

IVB has a collaboration with the credit card company MasterCard to jointly develop and market methods for making secure payments using wireless mobile devices, and payment management will be one element of the ASP service.

IVB will host and manage the Omvia ASP service, helping network operators reduce the time to market, and minimise the capital investment and risks. The service will also appeal to Virtual Mobile Network Operators (MVNOs) which buy 3G capacity from licence holders and present themselves as mobile operators.

This business model has already taken root in the 2G environment, with Virgin Mobile of the UK and Sense of Norway both retailing mobile phone services that run on other operators' networks. The high cost of licences and infrastructure, allied to the ability to offer a far broader range of services, means the MVNO market is expected to really take off in 3G.

The advances in voice recognition technology make it possible to have so-called voice skins so that the voice will appeal to the target market. Mr Edwards suggests a voice modelled on the television comedian Ali G would appeal to the UK youth market, while an Edinburgh accent would be popular with Americans.

The Omvia technology also presents a way for telecoms companies to bridge the digital divide between their analogue, fixed-line customers and digital mobile users.

For example, using an analogue phone, customers can use voice commands to access websites and have information read to them.

Similarly, they can record a message, which is then transmitted via e-mail as a voice attachment, to a personal computer. The recipient can key in a text response, to be read back over the phone.