Phone system on Web? You make the call

A Massachusetts company is hoping its electronic telephone assistant will spread like wildfire with the help of the Internet.

By the end of this year, Wildfire Communications will unveil a new edition of its Wildfire system that lets users manage their digital Rolodexes and schedule conference calls via the Web, said Nicholas d'Arbeloff, the co-founder and vice president of the Lexington, Massachusetts-based company.

The system, called Wildfire, uses voice recognition technology to help users manage telecommunication, such as setting up conference calls or routing calls to mobile, office, or home phones. Users can now input their directories into the Wildfire system for speed-dialing numbers from anywhere, but they have to labor through a telephone keypad to do so.

The Web interface, due later this year in version 2.0 of Wildfire, will let users enter names and phone numbers through their computers, d'Arbeloff said. Eventually, the company hopes to offer full access to voicemail through the Web, he added.

Pricing for the Web-based system was not available. The current Wildfire system costs $150 to $200 a month per user.