Abstract: A system for providing announcements for transmission over a telecommunications network. The system includes a store (15) in which the announcements are stored. A processor (1) controls the writing and reading of announcements to and from the store. A bus (14) carries control signals to and from the processor and a second bus (20) carries digitally encoded audio signals in a synchronous time divided manner, which can be transmitted to the network via an interface (3). Data transfer between the buses is controlled by bus transfer modules (56). The structure is flexible and the system may include one or more code convert logic devices (50) for different types of speech encoding.