Call reestablishment system

Details Call reestablishment system Call reestablishment system

1998-02-04

2001-09-18

Matar, Ahmad (Department: 2642)

Telephonic communications

Plural exchange network or interconnection

With interexchange network routing

C379S201060, C379S210010, C379S219000, C379S220010, C455S434000, C455S455000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06292551

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to communication systems and, in particular, to a communication system that enables a user to automatically establish a replacement call connection for an existing call connection without disrupting the communication between the caller and the called party.
PROBLEM
It is a problem in the field of communication systems to provide the user with high quality communication connections at a reasonable cost and yet also provide the user with a certain degree of control over the communication connections to satisfy their particular communication needs. A particular example of this problem is the instance where a user establishes a communication connection with a called party and discovers that the quality of the communication connection is inadequate for the needs of the parties. In this instance, in existing systems, there are three options that are available to the calling party: hang up the existing communication connection and establish a new communication connection to replace the original communication connection, hang up the communication connection and request an operator to establish a new communication connection to replace the original communication connection, or remain on the communication connection and endure the lack of quality of the communications.
In the first of these options, the calling party incurs the cost and inconvenience involved in requesting the called party to remain available while the calling party drops the communication connection and dials a new communication connection to the called party to replace the original communication connection. A secondary cost with this procedure is that the initial charges for the establishment of a communication connection are significantly greater than the cost to remain on an existing communication connection for an equivalent amount of time. This is especially true in the instance where the call is originated from a hotel or in many cases in a foreign country.
The second of the above noted options suffer the same penalties as the first option with the exception that the user is typically credited with the cost of the original communication connection since that communication connection did not provide the requested quality of service. Additional time is required, however, to contact the operator and explain the situation and have the operator establish a new communication connection to the called party.
The final of the options is the least expensive in terms of out-of-pocket costs charged to the calling party, but the two parties to the communication connection must endure the aggravation of poor quality communications and, in the case of a data communication connection, the potential loss of data due to the inadequate quality of the communication connection.
Thus, there are no communication systems that enable the automated transfer of an existing communication connection between the calling and called parties to another communication connection of equivalent nature. All communication connection substitutions require the manual intervention of the calling party and result in the interruption of the communication between the calling and called parties while a replacement communication connection is manually established.
Another example of the above noted problem not discussed above is the instance where a party originates a call in a foreign country to a domestic destination and must pay the tariffs of the communication carrier that serves the territory from which the call is originated. The tariffs charged by a foreign carrier can be greatly in excess of those charged by a domestic carrier. Therefore, it is greatly advantageous, especially on calls of long duration, to have the communication connection originated from the domestic destination to the calling party rather than from the calling party to the domestic destination. Unfortunately, all existing systems that are capable of such a transfer of billing represent systems that are callback systems that respond to the origination of a call by the calling party to the automated callback system with the calling party identifying their telephone number by disconnecting from the communication connection and originating a new call to the calling party to thereby obtain the advantageous tariffs charged by the domestic carrier. The problem with these systems is that the calling party must originate a call to the automated system which then calls the calling party back on a new communication connection and thereby preventing the calling party from calling the desired destination directly since the automated calling system must perform the callback function and then enable the calling party to transfer the call to an alternate destination once the replacement communication connection has been established. Furthermore, if the calling party is calling from a hotel, the automated callback system has no capability to designate the particular hotel room in which the calling party has originated the call from. Therefore, no automated callback systems can provide the communication capability to enable a calling party to automatically obtain benefit of the advantageous domestic tariffs when directly calling a destination without having a significant complex set of steps that must be executed to obtain benefit of the domestic tariff, which steps offset the economic benefit of the reduced tariff especially in the case where numerous calls must be made by the calling party.
Therefore, it is a problem in communication systems that the calling party has little if any choice in the selection of facilities that are used to serve a particular communication connection, either in quality of the communication connection or the serving carrier with their particular tariff rates. If the calling party is dissatisfied with the communication connection, the calling party must terminate the communication with the called party and then manually initiate a replacement communication connection.
A number of prior art systems have been developed to address the automatic selection of communication facilities to serve a particular communication connection, but these prior art systems are exclusively directed to the determination that the called party has the capability for enhanced communication capability, such as the provision of video communication service in addition to audio communication, and serve to acquire the necessary additional facilities to serve the original communication connection. Examples of such systems can be found in a number of patents, including published Japanese Patent Application Serial Number 205953 that discloses a video telephone set call control method that uses the basic interface of ISDN to provide the facilities necessary to serve a video communication connection where the original communication connection has no indication that the called party has such capability. In particular, the disclosed apparatus originates a call over one of the communication channels provided by ISDN to the called station set and, once connected thereto, queries the destination station set to determine the nature of its communication capabilities. If it is determined that the destination station set has video communication capability, the apparatus automatically requests connection of another communication channel that can serve the video communication needs of the calling and destination station sets. If the destination station set does not have video communication capability, the system simply uses the original communication channel of the ISDN connection to serve this call.
A similar video telephone station set communication system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,345 titled “Enhanced ISDN 800 Service” and that discloses a system that automatically provides a second communication path between a customer and a business in order to provide additional product information, such as video information to the customer. This system responds to the receipt of an incoming call on a B channel of an ISDN facility by determining both the calling party&apo

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