Eckoh wins new contracts with Trinity Mirror for Interactive Services

Eckoh, the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services, today announced two new contracts with Trinity Mirror ("TM"), the UK's largest newspaper publisher, for the provision of interactive services.

Following the competitive tender process TM have appointed Eckoh as their exclusive network operator for all premium telephone and SMS services and as their service provider for a range of interactive services including votes, competitions, games and information lines to TM's portfolio of national and regional newspapers including the Daily Mirror, Daily Record, Sunday Mirror and The People.

Both contracts run until the end of 2009 and are in line with Eckoh's stated new strategy of operating these services on a sustainable margin and with very clear lines of responsibility, reflecting the more stringent demands now placed on telephone service providers.

Under the exclusive network operator agreement all services for TM, including those provided by third parties, will operate through Eckoh's network. Eckoh will manage the provisioning and reporting of these services on an ongoing basis.

Nik Philpot, Eckoh's Chief Executive Officer commented: "We have spent much of last year restructuring and tailoring our proposition to media companies to become a best practice supplier and to reflect the new and challenging demands that the industry now requires. Strict compliance, process, and above all quality are now the critical components of what a network operator and service provider needs to supply. We are delighted that Trinity Mirror has concluded that Eckoh are still the best supplier in the market to provide them with such a service and we look forward to continuing what has been an excellent partnership over the last 3 years."

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For further enquiries, please contact:

Eckoh plc
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer Tel: 01442 458 300

Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director Jim Hennigan, Executive Director www.eckoh.com

Corfin Communications
Harry Chathli / Neil Thapar Tel: 020 7977 0020

Seymour Pierce
Jonathan Wright / Parimal Kumar Tel: 020 7107 8000

About Eckoh Eckoh is the UK's largest provider of hosted speech recognition services and sets the standard for outsourced automated solutions across Europe. Eckoh enables its clients to communicate more effectively and to enhance their profitability, while making life better for the people who use their services.

Eckoh provides automated services in virtually every industry sector for clients including TD Waterhouse, Vue Cinemas, William Hill, O2, Ideal Shopping Direct, DEFRA, The London Stock Exchange, the COI, National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, BSkyB, Parcelforce Worldwide, BAA, Barclays Stockbrokers, United Utilities and Scottish Power.

Eckoh is also a market leader in providing interactive services to large media owners and has amongst its clients Trinity Mirror, the largest newspaper publisher, IPC, the leading consumer magazines group and Bauer, the largest privately owned publisher in Europe.

In 2003, Eckoh formed a strategic alliance with BT to capitalise on the growing opportunity for speech recognition services in the corporate marketplace. The alliance, which was extended in July 2005 until 2010, has supplied speech services to over 25 clients. The combined strengths of both parties have created an unrivalled and value-added speech proposition and clients of the alliance include: National Rail Enquiries, AXA PPP healthcare, Parcelforce Worldwide, Barclays Stockbrokers, TD Waterhouse, NIE, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Three Valleys Water.

Eckoh has a call processing platform of 10,000 lines (capable of handling over 650,000 calls an hour) of which over 8,000 lines incorporate speech recognition technology making it one of the largest speech enabled call processing platforms in Europe.

In the first half of the financial year ending September 2007 Eckoh generated a turnover of £18 million and had cash balances of £5.7m. Further information can be found at www.eckoh.com.

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