VOICE-MAIL is expected to be widely used in China as part of the Government's emphasis on developing telecommunications, according to a voice-processing manufacturer. William Hui, general manager of Active Voice China Corp, predicts that voice-mail will soon be employed by various mainland enterprises. Active Voice, which was jointly founded by US-based Active Voice Corp and Galaxy Technology Development (Hong Kong), has set up an office in Shanghai and development centres in Xiamen, Shanghai and Beijing to conduct research on voice processing. Mr Hui said voice-mail could help to solve China's inadequate telephone system. The voice-processing system would receive and store telephone messages instantly, without occupying lines for a long time, thereby allowing more people to use the lines. But he said mainlanders would take time to cultivate the habit of leaving telephone messages. Mr Hui said the Chinese Government had spent US$20 billion developing telecommunications on the mainland. One innovation designed for companies was to include several dialects in the voice-processing system so that mainlanders would be able to receive messages in those dialects. Mr Hui is aware that China represents a large potential software market. Three systems, including Repartee Voice Processing, Replay Voice Processing and Resource Interactive Voice Response, will be adopted in China, with each serving different client needs.
