Boston Technology, Inc.

In 1986, Scott Jones co-founded and served until 1992 as Chairman and Chief Scientist of his first company, Boston Technology, Inc. There, he obtained patents for technologies that enabled telephone companies worldwide to offer voice mail on a massive scale to both wireless and wireline networks. Using these voice-messaging technologies, Boston Technology became very successful and later merged with Comverse Technology, Inc., (NASDAQ: CMVT), resulting in a multi-billion-dollar company whose products continue to rely on Scott’s patented technologies.

Those products are used by the majority of telephone companies throughout the world -- even in developing countries and disadvantaged areas where many people don't have either a regular phone or a cell phone and must rely on voice mail through a phone in a central area to increase the range and flexibility of their communications geared to improve their lifestyle and economic outlook.

THE EARLY YEARS
When Boston Technology began as a private company in April 1986, it focused on voice-messaging systems that usually were installed on the premises of large and medium-sized businesses and often were interfaced to the private-branch exchange (PBX) of that business's phone system.

THE BIG BREAK
On March 7, 1988, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Baby Bells (Regional Bell Operating Companies or RBOCs) would be allowed to offer voice-processing services via their networks to businesses and residences. Because the Baby Bells were not permitted to manufacture voice-processing systems themselves, they had to look for equipment manufacturers with products that could support their extraordinarily large customer bases and that could be installed in the phone companies’ central switching offices. Each Baby Bell needed a huge system in order to offer easy-to-use voice-processing services via its network to businesses and residences.

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
Due to Scott’s foresight and leadership, Boston Technology was positioned in the right place at the right time.

THE PROMISE
When Bell Atlantic sought out companies who could provide such a system for its massive network, Scott, then 26, told them that, in three months, Boston Technology could deliver a voice mail system "20 times bigger and much more reliable than any system out there."

WORKING 'ROUND THE CLOCK
To meet that promise, Scott had to find a way for Boston Technology to adapt its voice-messaging system to provide a massive-scale system and to adhere to the more stringent engineering requirements of a telephone company's central office switching equipment. Boston Technology employees rolled up their sleeves and went to work. As the principal architect of Boston Technology's voice mail technology, Scott spent a month locked in his office developing the technologies required to meet Bell Atlantic's needs.

NOT YOUR MOTHER'S MAINFRAME
Instead of relying on huge mainframe computers as competitors did, Scott’s patented technologies used a scalable chain of up to 100 or more personal computers in a unique and patentable configuration with a telecommunications switch integrated into the architecture in order to make the Boston Technology system more scalable, more reliable, more economical, and much easier to use than competing systems. Also, it had greater mass-user capacity.

ADVANTAGES
This enabled telephone companies to offer very large, economical, and easy-to-use voice mail networks to the mass market.

THREE OF THE SEVENT BABY BELLS BUY BOSTON TECHNOLOGY VOICEMAIL EQUIPMENT
Southwestern Bell Corporation, Bell South, and Bell Atlantic used Boston Technology's equipment to offer voice mail to their many customers. The other four Baby Bells were U.S. West, Ameritech, NYNEX, and Pacific Telesis.

BENEFITS FOR BOSTON TECHNOLOGY SHAREHOLDERS
The common stock of Boston Technology commenced trading in the over-the-counter market on May 23, 1986. On Feb. 22, 1989, the company's common stock commenced trading on NASDAQ (the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System) under the trading symbol "BSTN."

HUGE RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Shareholders of Boston Technology made dramatic financial gains. Original investors were able to purchase shares for two cents ($0.02) in 1986, and those shares became worth in excess of $150 by the year 2000. That is a 750,000 percent "return on investment."

SPIN-OFFS
There were several spin-off companies from Boston Technology, including Art Technology Group in Cambridge, Mass., and others which created thousands of additional jobs.

PATENTS
Scott Jones is an inventor on 11 patents. Nine of those patents are for technologies that enabled telephone companies worldwide to offer voice mail on a massive scale in cost-effective, scalable ways.

ADVANTAGES OF VOICEMAIL
Prior to voice mail, roughly half of all phone calls made in this country didn't get through, and 70 percent were informational calls that didn't require two-way conversation. Voicemail provides a solution to "telephone tag." Moreover, unlike answering machines, voicemail systems allow callers to edit their calls, leave confidential messages, and mark messages as urgent so that they trigger a beeper to reach the mailbox owner.

UNEXPECTED BENEFITS OF VOICEMAIL
The phone companies’ networks also provide less obvious benefits by taking voicemail to developing countries and disadvantaged areas where many people don't have either a regular phone or a cell phone and must rely on voicemail through a phone in a central area to increase the range and flexibility of their communications geared to improve their lifestyle and economic outlook. One unexpected benefit of voicemail is that it gives homeless people in the United States more incentive to look for jobs because they can receive messages in a professional way through pay phones and don't have to worry about missing a call from a prospective employer.