Automation of locality recognition in ADAS plus

In North America, people call the directory assistance operator to find the phone number of a business or residential listing. The directory assistanc e service is generally maintained by telcos, and it represents a significan t cost to them. Partial or complete automation of directory assistance woul d result in significant cost savings for telcos. Nortel Networks has a prod uct called Automated Directory Assistance System (ADAS) Plus which partiall y automates this directory assistance function through the use of speech re cognition. The system has been deployed all across Quebec, through most of US West and BellSouth. ADAS Plus primarily automates the response to the qu estion "for what city?" through speech recognition. We give details of this speech recognition system and outline its performance in the deployed regi ons. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.