June 17, 1996

NYNEX CONTACT: John Bonomo, (212) 395-0500

NYNEX To Use New Voice Technology For Directory Assistance

NEW YORK -- Residents and businesses across the Northeast who dial NYNEX for directory assistance soon will hear a new kind of speech processing technology at work to speed their requests to operators.

The new technology has been working in parts of the Bronx, and Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, and will be introduced gradually across NYNEX's service area during the remainder of the summer, beginning today in Manhattan.

Callers to NYNEX's directory assistance operator service will hear a recorded greeting that tells them they have reached NYNEX directory assistance. Next, recorded voice prompts will ask what city or town the caller wishes, and then the name of the person or company for which the caller needs a telephone number.

The recorded information from the callers then will be digitally recorded and sent electronically to an available operator who will hear the information and perform the search through NYNEX's directory database. The remainder of the call will proceed in the standard manner.

If the system encounters silence, callers will be asked, again by the recorded prompt, to say their request. An operator will be on line after the information request is forwarded, should an accurate spelling of a name or any further clarification of the request be required.

Across its service territory, NYNEX's 3,100 directory assistance operators handle some 2.7 million requests for telephone numbers daily. "Our expectation is that this will shave about two seconds off the time our operators spend processing a call," enabling them to help more customers. Add that time to the millions of requests our operators get each day, and there is a considerable savings realized in terms of time and cost," said Katherine Linder, NYNEX vice president and general manager for Operator Services. "Of course, our primary goal is to make the new service easy for our customers, while enhancing the entire directory assistance process."

NYNEX conducted a trial of the new voice technology in the Bronx, Westchester, Rockland and Putnam areas in mid-1995.