Eckoh Technologies Regulatory News (ECK)

18 Jun 2007 07:01

Eckoh PLC18 June 2007 ECKOH AWARDED THREE YEAR CONTRACT EXTENSION WITH O2 Eckoh plc ("Eckoh"), the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognitionservices, today announced a three year contract extension for the provisioningcomponents of O2's Age Verification and Parental Control solutions, usingadvanced self-service technology. Under the terms of the new contract, Eckohwill supplement the automated telephone based service with an equivalent webbased offering, providing O2 customers with extended self-service options and 24/7 channel choice. The contract renewal follows on from Eckoh's successful management of the AgeVerification and Parental Control provisioning services since 2004. Bothservices are key components of O2's infrastructure developments designed toensure that only customers over the age of 18 can access commercial contentservices classified as 18, and to offer parents a robust method of restrictingaccess to internet sites on their child's mobile. Both telephone and web based self-service components will be managed fromEckoh's highly scalable and fully resilient self-service platform, which iscapable of handling 650,000 calls an hour and 8,000 calls simultaneously. Theuse of web based technologies and techniques, form an integral part of theextended solution, drawing upon Eckoh's substantial web design and deploymentheritage. Eckoh's browser-based business intelligence system will further enable O2 todirectly monitor call and web statistics measured by volume, type of request andtime of day, as well as the ability to track customer channel usage and serviceperformance on a real-time basis. Jim Hennigan, Executive Director, Eckoh commented:"The extension of our agreement with O2 is a clear indication of their long termcommitment to both Eckoh and the advanced self-service solution, which hasproved so fundamental to this important service. The new web based capabilitywill form an integral part of O2's enhanced solution, providing customers withan even more comprehensive and convenient self-service offering as well asextended 24/7 channel choice." Jonny Shipp, Head of Content Standards at O2, said:"The age verification service is one of the core elements of our programme torestrict children's access to inappropriate content and give parents morecontrol and greater peace of mind. Over the past 3 years, Eckoh has demonstratedits capability as a service provider that has the necessary expertise andtechnical infrastructure to deliver an extremely robust solution. We areconfident that the extended web capability will provide our customers with aneven more convenient service whilst ensuring a high level of consistency acrossour contact channels, whether web or telephone based. " More about Parental Control and Age Verification Provisioning Services:The Parental Control provisioning establishes the profile of the handset byautomatically capturing the customer's mobile number, which is then verifiedwith O2's internal systems. On validation of customer details, the user isprompted to select a PIN number, which they can use to enable or disable thecontrols on their handset. Age Verification establishes the profile of the handset by automaticallycapturing the customer's mobile number, which is then verified with O2'sinternal systems. On validation of customer details, the user is advised of thecharges to activate Age Verification and taken through a secure credit cardmodule. If the user chooses to switch Open Access off, then they are advisedthat Age Verification will be de-activated in the next hour and a text messagewill be sent to confirm same. Both services offer peace of mind to parents wishing to protect their childrenwhilst online. For further enquiries, please contact: Eckoh plcNik Philpot, Chief Executive OfficerAdam Moloney, Group Finance DirectorJim Hennigan, Executive Directorwww.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300 Corfin CommunicationsHarry Chathli, Neil Thapar, Ben Hunt Tel: 020 7929 8989 Seymour PierceJonathan Wright Tel: 020 7107 8050 About Eckoh Eckoh is the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services. Eckohenables its clients to communicate more effectively and to enhance theirprofitability, whilst making life better for the people who use their services. Eckoh provides automated services in virtually every industry sector for clientsincluding Vue Cinemas, William Hill, O2, Ideal Shopping Direct, DEFRA, TheLondon Stock Exchange, National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, BSkyB,Parcelforce Worldwide, BAA, Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, UnitedUtilities, Scottish Power and NIE (Northern Ireland Electricity). Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large mediaowners and has amongst its clients ITV, the UK's largest commercial broadcaster,Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper publisher and IPC, the leading consumermagazines group. In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growingopportunity for speech recognition services in the corporate marketplace. Thealliance, which was extended in July 2005 until 2010, has supplied speechservices to over 25 clients generating more than 55 million minutes of speechself-service transactions. The combined strengths of both parties have createdan unrivalled and value-added speech proposition and clients of the allianceinclude: National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide,Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and ThreeValleys Water. Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognitiontechnology making it one of the largest speech enabled call processing platformsin Europe. In the year to 31 March 2007 Eckoh generated a turnover of £103 million with anadjusted PBT of £2m and had cash balances of £9.6m. Further information can befound at www.eckoh.com. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange