Eckoh win 3 year contract

Eckoh PLC
18 June 2007


   Eckoh and Twenty First Century Communications win three-year contract with
       United Utilities for advanced power outage communications solution

                                        
United Utilities, one of the UK's leading providers of electricity services, has
selected Eckoh plc ('Eckoh') and Twenty First Century Communications, Inc.
('TFCC'), for the delivery of an automated call handling solution to provide
customers with around-the-clock information and service updates in the event of
a power outage.

Eckoh, the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services, has an
exclusive alliance with TFCC to deliver power outage communications solutions
for utilities organisations across the UK. This is the fourth substantive deal
for the Eckoh and TFCC partnership, which when United Utilities is added will
cover over 6.5 million of the UK's 30 million electricity meters.

The United Utilities solution will be underpinned by TFCC's industry-leading
High Volume Call Answering service (HVCA(R)), which incorporates advanced speech
recognition technology from Eckoh. The service, which has been customised and
consistently refined for the UK market over the past three years, will give
customers the ability to inform United Utilities when they are experiencing a
power outage and to receive restoration updates on a 24/7 basis.

Thanks to Eckoh's advanced speech recognition technology, the service will
provide callers with location specific restoration updates, by capturing the
caller's spoken post code, address and entered telephone number. Other proven
features of the service include an innovative call back capability, designed to
confirm with customers when power has been restored in their local area.

All calls to the service will be hosted on Eckoh's highly scaleable self-service
platform, which has the capability of handling 650,000 calls an hour and 8,000
calls concurrently. The vast scalability of Eckoh's platform gives United
Utilities the critical reassurance they need to manage the unpredictable volume
of calls received, even during severe power outage periods.

Sally Ainsworth, Electricity Business Customer Services Manager, United
Utilities commented:

'By leveraging TFCC and Eckoh's proven track record and highly specialised
expertise, we look forward to setting our customer service bar even higher and
to driving home real business innovation and operational benefits to our
organisation as a whole.'

Jim Hennigan, Executive Director, Eckoh said:
'We are delighted to win this significant contract with one of the UK's leading
utilities companies. I believe that our repeat business success is further
testament to the utility industry's growing appetite for telephone-based
self-service solutions that have the ability to provide a 24/7 level of
telephone service that customers have come to appreciate and to simply expect.'

Tom Calabro, Senior Vice President, TFCC, added: 
'Eckoh has been an ideal partner to work with as we continue to attract and 
retain important large UK clients for our portfolio of highly specialised proven 
services. United Utilities has impressed us with its commitment to adopt best 
practices and we greatly appreciate the opportunity to work with them to deliver 
ongoing improvements in service to its customers.'

Eckoh estimates that the market for automated speech solutions within the UK
utilities industry will be worth around £3m in 2008, and will grow at a CAGR of
between 25 and 30% between now and the end of the decade.


For further enquiries, please contact:

Eckoh plc
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer
Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director
Jim Hennigan, Executive Director
www.eckoh.com                                        Tel: [phone]

Corfin Communications
Harry Chathli, Neil Thapar, Ben Hunt                 Tel: [phone]

Seymour Pierce
Jonathan Wright                                      Tel: [phone]


About Eckoh

Eckoh is the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services. Eckoh
enables its clients to communicate more effectively and to enhance their
profitability, whilst making life better for the people who use their services.

Eckoh provides automated services in virtually every industry sector for clients
including Vue Cinemas, William Hill, O2, Ideal Shopping Direct, DEFRA, The
London Stock Exchange, National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, BSkyB,
Parcelforce Worldwide, BAA, Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, United
Utilities, Scottish Power and NIE (Northern Ireland Electricity).

Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large media
owners and has amongst its clients ITV, the UK's largest commercial broadcaster,
Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper publisher and IPC, the leading consumer
magazines group.

In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growing
opportunity for speech recognition services in the corporate marketplace. The
alliance, which was extended in July 2005 until 2010, has supplied speech
services to over 25 clients generating more than 55 million minutes of speech
self-service transactions. The combined strengths of both parties have created
an unrivalled and value-added speech proposition and clients of the alliance
include: National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide,
Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Three
Valleys Water.

Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over
650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognition
technology making it one of the largest speech enabled call processing platforms
in Europe.

In the year to 31 March 2007 Eckoh generated a turnover of £103 million with an
adjusted PBT of £2m and had cash balances of £9.6m. Further information can be
found at www.eckoh.com.











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