-- OEM Agreement Will Yield New Interactive Telephony Solutions Enabling
Users To Access E-Mail Over The Telephone --

DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION AND LINKON CORPORATION SIGN OEM AGREEMENT TO
PORT DECtalk TEXT-TO-SPEECH SOFTWARE TO LinkEngine TELEPHONY PLATFORM

-- Text-to-Speech Telephony Solutions Will Improve Efficiencies In Major
Industries, Including Airline Travel, Healthcare, Catalog Sales and
Manufacturing --

MAYNARD, Mass. -- August 14, 1995 -- Consumers who place catalog orders by
telephone, business travelers who check on airline schedules or change
reservations, no longer need to wait on the phone for clerical assistance,
thanks to a combination of Digital Equipment Corporation's DECtalk
text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis software and Linkon Corporation's
LinkEngine computer telephony platform. These travelers also, when
checking their e-mail messages, can now mark these communications and have
them instantly faxed anywhere in the world.

The enhanced qualities of DECtalk technology are now possible because of an
Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) agreement signed recently between
the two companies, in which Digital's DECtalk technology, transforming
ordinary text into natural sounding, highly intelligible speech, is
combined with Linkon's LinkEngine, the only computer telephony integration
(CTI) board which places e-mail, fax, modem, text-to-speech, speech
recognition, and other capabilities, all on one card.

Under the agreement, Linkon will license DECtalk software from Digital and
port it to its LinkEngine series, including architecture for the PC-Bus,
S-Bus (Sun Microsystems) and VME-bus (Motorola, Silicon Graphics and
others). These solutions will use DECtalk software to enable access to
e-mail over the telephone, as well as embed high quality voice recognition
into a range of telephony systems, from airline reservations to weather
services.

Linkon, a leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of software
development tools and digital signal processor (DSP) hardware for the CTI
market, expects to ship new boards with the TTS features by year-end.
According to the company, organizations dependent upon interactive
telecommunications -- including large telephone companies (telcos) and
telephone/multimedia application developers -- will be among the first to
gravitate to the new board-level solutions.

"Our customers in the computer telephony market, including OEMs,
value-added resellers (VARs), telcos, and systems integrators, seek
stronger e-mail and voice options," said Charles Castelli, chairman of
Linkon. "With the tremendous increase in Internet communication, customers
want a mechanism where they can phone-in for their Internet messages and
not only have them read clearly over the telephone, but also be able to
mark an e-mail message and have it faxed to them wherever they desire.
Realizing this, we wanted to be first-to-market with cost-effective,
integrated telephony boards that provide high-quality voice, fax, and
text-to-speech options. The DECtalk product, which produces highly
intelligible human speech over the telephone, provides an important
capability to our boards while meeting our quality standards."

Larry Cabrinety, vice president of Digital's Components and Peripherals
Business Unit, said, "Voice has become a critical technology for OEMs in
the telecommunications industry. New OEM product designs incorporating
DECtalk technology will grow Digital's penetration in emerging market
sectors for the next five years."

Cabrinety reports that the DECtalk product has realized a 75% market growth
in key OEM embedded markets, including telephony, manufacturing and
process control, since early 1994.

William Armitage, vice president of Digital's Embedded and Realtime OEM
Products Group, said that the Linkon agreement will enable Digital to
introduce DECtalk technology to a broader base of the telephony market.
"Our association with Linkon has already stirred strong interest in
DECtalk technology among VARs, OEMs and developers in the interactive
communications and CTI market sectors," he said.

According to Castelli, Linkon's new board-level solutions will attract
customers with more demanding telephony requirements. "Catalog sales will
be very dependent upon voice technology, especially when the caller
requires immediate answers to questions regarding pricing changes,
inventory questions and item descriptions, that the catalog manufacturers'
staff is not equipped to handle during the high-volume seasons," he said.

Linkon will sell the TTS-enabled boards to other large manufacturers as
well as to VARs and systems integrators who, in turn, will develop
specialized telephony applications customized for specific industries. One
"early adopter" market is the airline industry, which is expected to
invest heavily in voice recognition and TTS to handle inquiries on such
variables as flight schedules and weather, which are under constant
change. "Now these changes can be made on a computer and instantly be made
available through TTS, rather than relying on clerks to take time looking
up such data.

There are innumerable other ways for our customers to apply DECtalk
technology, such as in accessing textual databases, weather reports,
medical transcriptions and status reports of insurance claims," he said.

Castelli expects voice technologies to dominate the CTI market through the
next five years, with e-mail access via the telephone as the critical
factor in this growth. "Research shows that Internet usage grew from 5
million to 30 million users from 1991-1995. That growth, coupled with the
increasing dependence on telephony as a customer satisfaction and
competitive tool for global industries worldwide, will escalate market
demand for speech and voice tools," he said.

According to Digital Equipment Corporation, DECtalk technology is regarded
as the premier human-like speech enhancement to any man/machine interface
by a variety of organizations in industries as diverse as
health-care/rehabilitation, telecommunications and multimedia/video games.
Transforming ordinary text into natural- sounding, intelligible speech,
the DECtalk product produces clear, correct pronunciation of single
characters, words, phrases and proper names -- all available in
personalized voices with extensive user controls to ensure optimum
performance in real-world applications.

According to Armitage, the evolution of digital signal processing
technology (DSP) and its convergence with the growth of integrated
telephony has led product manufacturers to consider text-to-speech
synthesis a strategic component of their own product design.

"These OEMs are just now learning how they can leverage text-to-speech
synthesis technology in their own designs. The emergence of DSPs and other
low-cost components have made the implementation of DECtalk technology
more practical, affordable and possible for OEM designs than ever before,"
he said.

In addition to the telephony market, Armitage states that DECtalk
technology has been successful in other OEM industries, including the game
market, multimedia PCs and workstations and PDAs. "Industrial
applications, particularly those considered `shop floor,' will use DECtalk
technology. It's ideal for machine tool status and alerts,
computer/control room alerts with vocalized emergency room procedures,
manufacturing inspection stations and material handling operations," he
said.

Located in New York City and Fairfield, CT, Linkon Corporation (LKON:BB)
designs, develops, produces and distributes unique software development
tools and digital signal processor (DSP) hardware for integrated voice,
data and image processing, serving the computer and telephone industries.
Linkon products are offered through distributors, VARs, systems
integrators and OEMs. The company was founded in 1984.

Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server
solutions from personal computers to integrated worldwide information
systems. Digital's Intel and Alpha platforms, storage, networking,
software and services, together with industry- focused solutions from
business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global
marketplace.
 
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