Telephonic communications – Multi-line or key substation system with selective switching...
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-06
2001-10-16
Matar, Ahmad (Department: 2642)
Telephonic communications
Multi-line or key substation system with selective switching...
C379S093230, C379S093350, C379S157000, C379S164000, C379S142010, C379S142080, C379S093070, C379S215010
Reexamination Certificate
active
06304644
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to customer premises equipment (CPE) (e.g. a telephone base and receiver unit) for use in telephone subscriber systems and more particularly to a customer premises equipment for use in telephone subscriber systems having caller identification (CID) and call waiting (CW) on a plurality of telephone lines.
2. Background Information
The call-waiting (CW) feature is generally well-known and available on many telephone systems (i.e., central offices). In conventional CW, when a subscriber to the CW service is engaged in a telephone conversation with a second party, the central office notifies the subscriber when a third party is attempting to call the subscriber. Typically, the central office notifies the subscriber of the incoming third party call by providing a CW tone or “click” which is audible to the subscriber. The subscriber then has the option to place the second party on hold and speak to the third party, or to ignore the CW signal and continue speaking to the second party.
Another service offered on some central offices is caller identification (CID). In the conventional CID feature the central office transmits a digitally encoded signal, representing the telephone number of a calling party, to a subscriber's customer premises equipment (CPE) (e.g., a telephone base and receiver unit). Provided that the subscriber's CPE is equipped with the appropriate receiving and decoding circuitry, the subscriber can view the calling party's telephone number on a display device and decide whether or not to answer the telephone call.
Some CPEs permit a subscriber to combine the CW and CID features in a single CPE (for example, CIDCW CPE) whereby the subscriber's CIDCW CPE displays a third party's CID information, (for example, the third party's name, telephone number, and any other information transmitted from the central office) while the subscriber is in communication with a second party. This allows the subscriber to make an informed decision as to whether or not to interrupt a current telephone call with the second party in order to answer the incoming call from the third party.
Some subscribers find it convenient to have access to multiple telephone lines. Although there are various CPEs capable of handling multiple telephone lines, should a subscriber want to implement the CIDCW feature on each of the telephone lines, a separate CIDCW CPE for each of the telephone lines is generally required. Obviously, this can be cumbersome and expensive for the user.
One solution may be to combine the circuitry from multiple CIDCW CPEs under a single housing. If so, the number of circuit elements needed to process CIDCW information for a single telephone line would be multiplied by the number of telephone lines the CPE is capable of handling. That is, for example, a two line CIDCW CPE would have two CID detectors (i.e., a separate CID detector for each telephone line) . Of course, as the number of circuit elements within a CPE are multiplied, the size and cost of the CPE increases. Clearly, there is a need for a cost-effective CPE and method that is capable of detecting, receiving and processing CID information over a plurality of telephone lines.
The CID and CIDCW features are well-known and are described in TR-NWT-000030,
Voiceband Data Transmission Interface Generic Requirements
, Issue 3 (Bellcore, April 1992) and TR-NWT-000575,
CLASS Feature: Calling Identify Delivery on Call Waiting,
FSD 01-02-1090, (A module of LSSGR, FR-NWT-000064) Issue 1 (Bellcore, October 1992), plus Revision 1, December 1994, the entire disclosure of each is incorporated herein by reference.
OBJECTS AND SUMMARY
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a multiple line customer premises equipment (CPE) that is capable of receiving caller identification (CID) information over a plurality of telephone lines.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a multiple line CPE that is capable of handling the caller identification and call-waiting (CIDCW) feature over a plurality of telephone lines.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a cost-effective multiple line CPE capable of handling caller identification (CID) information with or without the call-waiting feature (CW) over a plurality of telephone lines.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a multiple line CPE that utilizes a single circuit for detecting CID information over a plurality of telephone lines.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a multiple line CPE that is capable of selectively enabling and disabling the CID feature over any of the plurality of telephone lines.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a multiple line CPE that is capable of selectively enabling and disabling the CW feature over any of the plurality of telephone lines.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a multiple line CPE that determines, based on a set of priorities, which one of a plurality of telephone lines on which to receive CID information.
It is yet still another object of the present invention to display received CID information and on which of the plurality of telephone lines the CID information is received.
In accordance with one form of the present invention, a customer premises equipment (CPE) is provided that is capable of accepting a plurality of telephone lines and receiving caller identification (CID) information from a central office on each of the plurality of telephone lines.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, the CPE is able to process CID information over a plurality of telephone lines by dynamically switching the connection of a CID detector from one telephone line to another, depending on the current state of the CPE. For example, in a two-line, CIDCW embodiment of the present invention, if the CPE is first engaged on Line-1 and a ring is received on Line-2, the CID detector is switched to Line-2 in order to detect the CID information. After the CID information from Line-2 is received, if Line-1 is still off-hook, the CID detector is reconnected to Line-1 in order to be able to detect CIDCW information from a second call on Line-1. It should be noted that during this process, the telephone conversation on Line-1 is allowed to proceed uninterrupted. However, if Line-1 is no longer off-hook and Line-2 is now off-hook, the CID detector remains coupled to Line-2. When Line-2 goes back on-hook, the CID detector reconnects to Line-1.
Switching a single CID detector between multiple telephone lines prevents the user from simultaneously receiving CID information over multiple telephone lines. However, the probability of receiving simultaneous telephone calls, particularly for a two-line CPE, has been determined to be relatively low. Therefore, the cost-savings in using the fewer components justifies the loss of that feature. Furthermore, since typical display components (i.e. liquid crystal displays) incorporated in most CID CPEs will display only one set of CID information at a time, simultaneously received CID information could not be simultaneously displayed.
Still further, a user may choose not to subscribe to the CID or CIDCW feature for all of the available telephone lines or may choose not to utilize all of the available telephone line connections. Therefore, it would not be necessary for the CPE to switch the CID circuitry to those telephone lines which do not subscribe to the CID and/or CIDCW feature or to the telephone lines that are not connected to the CPE. In an embodiment of the present invention where a telephone line is connected to the CPE but does not subscribe to the CID or CIDCW feature, the user may selectively disable the CID or CIDCW feature for the specified telephone lines, to prevent the CID/CIDCW circuit from unnecessarily connecting to a particular telephone line. Hereinafter, the CID or CIDCW feature is considered “enabled” if the user subscribes to the res
Bui Bing
Casio Communications, Inc.
Frishauf, Holtz Goodman, Langer & Chick, P.C.
Matar Ahmad
LandOfFree
Apparatus and method for cost effective caller... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Apparatus and method for cost effective caller..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Apparatus and method for cost effective caller... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2557208