Contract Win

Eckoh Technologies PLC 29 October 2003 For Immediate Release Wednesday 29th Oct 2003 Eckoh Technologies Plc Eckoh signs exclusive contract to provide hosted telephony services to Vodafone Rapide corporate customers • 1-year exclusive contract for any Vodafone Rapide 'Virtual Event' using Eckoh's speech recognition and IVR capabilities. • Astra Zeneca, Barclays and Whitbread are already signed up for the Vodafone Rapide 'Virtual Event' service Eckoh Technologies plc (Eckoh), Europe's largest speech application service provider, today announces a 1-year exclusive contract with Wire-e, leading developer of business software tools, for the provision of speech recognition and IVR services to corporate customers of Vodafone's Rapide 'Virtual Event'. Wire-e, who has an exclusive agreement to supply Vodafone with Rapide, wanted to expand and enhance the range of services they can offer. They selected Eckoh as their long-term partner because of the breadth of speech recognition and IVR solutions that were available, the speed with which these could be deployed and the size of the call-processing platform on which the applications were to be hosted. The Rapide service, which is designed for Vodafone business users on the move, offers a suite of products which includes having a personal assistant managing your contacts and numbers, sending emails that appear as if they were sent by you, sending voice messages to groups of people and recording voice broadcasts for others to dial into. Rapide is accessed by calling 1500 on a Vodafone mobile and there are currently over 300 corporate customers who are signed up to the service. The first 'Virtual Event', which went live on October 15th with Astra Zeneca, allows corporates to upload audio broadcasts remotely onto Eckoh's system and then invite selected parties to access the broadcast by alerting them with an SMS containing the access details. Other corporate customers including Barclays and Whitbread have also signed up to use this service. Nigel Shanahan, Managing Director of Wire-e said: "Vodafone Rapide is used by many of the UK's largest companies who not only expect the product to be of the highest quality and reliability but also continuing to innovate. This is why we chose Eckoh, to provide us with market leading hosted solution capability and a creative and responsive delivery team. In addition, with regulations tightening on mobile use in cars, the ability to use speech recognition instead of the phone keypad becomes vital going forward when designing services for business users on the move, and Eckoh gives us the capability to deliver on this with confidence." Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer of Eckoh Technologies said: "We are very happy to announce another important contract for Eckoh Speech Solutions with this exclusive agreement with Wire-e. The Rapide service has to satisfy not only the high technical standards of Vodafone but also the long list of FTSE 100 companies who utilise it, so we are very pleased to have been selected as the exclusive supplier to this audience. The reaction from customers to the launch of the 'Virtual Event' service has been extremely positive and we are very excited about other product launches we have planned with Wire-e." For further information, please contact: Eckoh Technologies plc Tel: 08701 100 700 Martin Turner, Chief Executive Officer Nik Philpot, Chief Operating Officer Buchanan Communications Tel: 020 7466 5000 Mark Edwards/Jeremy Garcia Notes to Editors About Eckoh Technologies Eckoh Technologies plc designs, builds, hosts and manages Speech Solutions for large corporations and organisations using ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technologies. It is a leading UK service provider and infrastructure owner/operator, and intends to exploit the anticipated growth in demand for Speech Solutions across Europe. In January 2003, Eckoh signed a landmark deal to create an exclusive speech alliance with BT to provide hosted speech recognition solutions to their corporate client base over the next 2 years. A two-year contract with TD Waterhouse for a speech recognition share check service was announced by BT and Eckoh in October 2003. In June 2003 Eckoh enlarged its call processing infrastructure to 7,000 lines (capable of handling 500,000 calls an hour) by installing another platform into a BT hosting facility. This created the largest speech enabled call processing platform in Europe. Eckoh has secured contracts to supply hosted Speech Solutions to clients including Virgin Mobile, Centrica, William Hill, Wyevale Garden Centres and the RNIB. Eckoh also operates the following businesses: • IVR - provides managed IVR and SMS services to media clients including GWR, Channel 4, Chrysalis, Endemol, EMAP, Johnston Press and Cartoon Network. Following the acquisition of Intelliplus plc in Sept 2003, Eckoh's IVR operation is one of the largest providers in the UK. • Network Services - under the "Symphony" and "Freecom" brands, Eckoh supplies fixed line and mobile telephony services, broadband and data services to SMEs in the UK and Ireland. Following the acquisition of Intelliplus Network Services now has an SME customer base of over 13,000. In the year to 31 March 2003, Eckoh generated turnover of £55.1m. To hear a demonstration of Eckoh Technologies' speech recognition product range, dial 08701 100 600. Further information can be found at www.eckoh.com. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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