A friend just sent this to me:
Verizon Business today launched Open Hosted Speech Services (OHSS), a speech platform that allows customers to create and host their own speech applications…[the platform includes] a hosted IVR application, a VoiceXML interpreter, text-to-speech capabilities, and a speaker verification application.
Hey, Verizon… 2001 called for you. Its wants its idea back.
Companies like Voxeo, BeVocal (now owned by Nuance) and TellMe (now owned by Microsoft) have been doing this for a long time.