The Telecom Web Application Framework

The World Wide Telecom Web (WWTW) (also known as Spoken Web) is emerging as an alternate web for the underprivileged, navigable entirely through a voice based interface using an ordinary telephone. A node in the WWTW graph is a voice application called a VoiceSite and is accessible over a simple phone call. VoiceSites are hyperlinked through Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP). However, several challenges need to be addressed for large scale development, deployment, interworking and usability of such VoiceSites. First and foremost, the set of users that need to be supported vary from software developers to illiterate rural farmers. Second, the fact that the primary user interface is voice based and over telephony presents its own challenges and opportunities. Third, most voice application frameworks currently available make it hard to separate navigational flow from process flow which makes systematic application development even harder. This paper presents Telecom Web Application Framework (TWAF) – an application development and deployment framework that is designed to support rapid development of Telecom Web applications (i.e. VoiceSites) while addressing the issues and requirements mentioned. We present the architecture, end-to-end design and a proof-of-concept implementation of the TWAF framework.