MUMBAI: Bharti Airtel and Nuance Communications announced the launch of an innovative voice service titled One Number, One Voice on Monday. One Number, One Voice will allow Airtel mobile customers across India to access major voice-based services offered by the company like Hello Tunes, Airtel Radio, News, Sports, Jokes by dialing a single number – 54321. Customers need to dial the number and speak to access the desired content, thus making search and discovery of content much simpler and easier. One Number, One Voice is available at a charge of Rs.2 per minute, and is powered by Nuance Recognizer 9.0. The service currently supports English, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam and will be rolled out in other languages subsequently.

Shireesh Joshi, Chief Marketing Officer-Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel said, One Number, One Voice service provides our customers with the dual benefit of a single number of access for VAS services and the ease of voice recognition with multiple language options – giving him a simple and improved service experience....

He added, Today, as we join hands with Nuance Communications for the launch of our One Number, One Voice service, we look forward to leveraging their expertise towards delivering an improved â€?search and discover content' experience for Airtel mobile customers across India... 

Michael Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Division, Nuance Communications, said, We're experiencing an unprecedented demand for voice services, as they provide consumers with a fast and intuitive way to access a broad range of content. Bharti Airtel's One Number One Voice service is an incredibly innovative initiative that brings the power of voice to millions of consumers across India, providing access to exciting content-driven voice services through a single number and simple voice commands....

Bharti Airtel and Nuance had jointly undertaken a pilot project in the Kerala circle for over a year to comprehensively test and refine the service. The menu for the One Number One Voice service has been designed on the basis of inputs from comprehensive customer research exercise on the usability aspects of value added service (VAS) voice applications, making navigation more intuitive and simpler 

This is the first application to incorporate the user interface guidelines and framework developed for Airtel by Nuance, which incorporates Nuance's global best practices and rigorous customer testing. The service is intuitive enough to distinguish between regular callers and first-time callers, offering a customized caller experience wherein novice callers get more hand-holding whereas frequent callers are offered short-cuts.