US electronics giant, Motorola, has unveiled new technology that will enable consumers to use natural voice commands to access Internet sites by telephone. The company said this week its new programming language, VoxML, allows designers and Internet providers to write voice-activated software that can answer queries about personal banking data, weather forecasts, sports scores, stock quotes, flight status and other quick information.

VoxML essentially converts a voice request into text digestible by a website, collects the answer and translates it back from text into speech for the caller. The company said the new technology would give a big boost to the emerging voice-enabled services industry, which is expected to grow to $3.4 billion (£2.2 billion) by 2003, according to experts.

Simmons Market Research Bureau says 54 per cent of US businesses now feature websites that provide information to their customers. Motorola added that several companies, such as The Weather Channel, CBS MarketWatch.com, Biztravel.com and SMartRoute were currently testing VoxML-equipped online sites.