Telephonic communications – With usage measurement
Reexamination Certificate
1998-01-22
2001-05-15
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
With usage measurement
C379S067100, C379S114030, C379S144020, C379S219000, C379S142030
Reexamination Certificate
active
06233325
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates to arrangements for providing an announcement of the name or telephone number of a caller to a called customer.
PROBLEM
Calling number and calling name identification is a popular service. The called party sees a display of the calling number or, more recently, the listed name of the calling party. This permits the called party to accept or reject the call.
A disadvantage of regular calling number
ame identification is that it requires special equipment to display the number or name at any receiving telephone station. This disadvantage is overcome in accordance with the teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 4,899,358 (the '358 patent) which discloses arrangements for announcing a name or number for an incoming call, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,076 (the '076 patent) which discloses arrangements for announcing a name or number for a waiting call to a party who has call waiting service. The announcement is receivable on any telephone instrument without requiring the special display equipment.
The disadvantage of the arrangements disclosed in the '358 and '076 patents is that there is disclosed no fully satisfactory arrangement for receiving the announcement from a source outside the terminating switch for incoming calls. Since the speech synthesis apparatus is expensive, especially on a per announcement circuit if the group of synthesized announcement circuits is small, it is highly desirable to centralize the synthesized announcement equipment at a service node to serve a plurality of terminating switches.
A further problem is that if the synthesized announcement circuits are remote from the terminating switch, the called party should be billed for the use of the public switched network for accessing the synthesized announcement circuits and for the use of the accessing network connection during the call. This presents an unusual billing problem since both the calling and called parties are billed for different parts of the call. If all billing were performed in the usual way, by preparing announcement billing records at the service node, i.e., the point of origination of the added connection, a severe coordination problem is encountered because the service node billing records must be combined with the usual subscriber billing records at the terminating switch.
Another problem associated with the use of a service node to supply the synthesized announcement is that if the service is provided in a straightforward way, an additional directory number must be assigned to each subscriber for the announcement service. This special directory number is used for making the connection from the service node to the called party; otherwise, the terminating switch, on receiving a call from the service node, would attempt to re-forward this call to the service node. While the '076 patent, which only treats call waiting calls gets around this requirement because call waiting can be provisioned to have a higher precedence than call forwarding, this solution does not work for incoming calls. The use of large numbers of additional telephone numbers is highly undesirable.
Another problem associated with the service is that there are some customers who do not wish to have their name announced and other customers who wish to substitute a pre-recorded announcement or a new announcement for an announcement of their name.
SOLUTION
The above problems are solved and an advance is made over the teaching of the prior art in accordance with applicants' invention for providing calling party identification announcement service (CPIAS), wherein upon receipt of a call to a party having announcement service, the call is forwarded, in response to instructions obtained from a data base, using a single special number or route index for forwarding calls from the terminating switch, to a centralized service circuit node/intelligent peripheral (SCN/IP) at some point for providing a synthesized announcement; the SCN/IP at some point queries a data base with the received calling directory number (typically obtained by automatic number identification ANI) in order to determine the text version of the calling customer's name; this text version is returned to the SCN/IP and will be used for synthesizing subsequent announcement to the called party; the SCN/IP, in response to instructions from a data base, originates an outgoing call via the terminating switch to the called party, a call which is recognized by the data base in a subsequent query from the terminating switch as originating from the SCN/IP and therefore not to forwarded but to be terminated to the called party; when the called station goes off hook, the SCN/IP plays a synthesized announcement of the caller's name, and waits for a signal indicating acceptance or rejection of the call; when the called station signals to the SCN/IP that the called party wishes to answer the call, the SCN/IP sends an indication to the terminating switch that the called station is to be connected directly to the calling station and the connection to the SCN/IP is to be dropped; billing for use of the SCN/IP and connections thereto is performed at the terminating office. Advantageously this arrangement allows the calling announcement service to be offered to parties without using any extra telephone numbers. Advantageously, this arrangement allows the billing for the basic call to be handled for the calling party at the originating switch, and allows the called party to be billed at the terminating switch which charges the called party for the use of the SCN/IP and the transmission facilities for accessing the SCN/IP as well as for the data base query to determine the calling party's textual name. Advantageously, this arrangement allows the service to be provided flexibly, using a data base, in accordance with the principles of intelligent network operation. In accordance with one feature of applicants' invention, a query to a data base (a service control point, SCP) is used to distinguish between the incoming call (which is to be forwarded to the service node) and the call from the service node to the terminating switch (which is to be terminated to the called party); the data base (SCP) recognizes the origination number used by the service node to distinguish incoming calls from service node originated calls. Advantageously, this arrangement avoids the need for two telephone numbers for the customers who have CPIAS.
In accordance with one feature of applicants' invention, the connection between the terminating switch and the SCN/IP is an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) connection wherein the two legs that are connected to the service node are on different call appearances of one B-channel. This simplifies the process of dropping the connection to the service node and bridging the incoming call connection to the terminating party; this process is accomplished by sending a transfer request command to the terminating switch requesting that the two call appearances be merged and that the B-channel be disconnected.
In accordance with another feature of applicant's invention, a pre-recorded announcement is substituted for the caller's name. This is a service that is likely to be especially popular for vendors who are afraid of being screened before the called party has a chance to hear what the call is all about.
In general, the announcement need not be of the caller's name, but can be any other selected characteristic such as the originating city, state or area code. Advantageously, such an announcement may prompt the called party to recognize that the call is a long distance call, possibly from an area in which the called party is interested.
In accordance with another feature of applicants' invention, the announcement can be generated by the caller for each call. If that announcement matches a previously accepted announcement, the call can be completed without an announcement to the called party.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4922519 (1990-05-01), Daudelin
patent: 5007076 (1991-04-01
Frech Dewey Alcott
Reid John Brian
Roug Anton Johnnes
Scale Timothy Jerome
Hoosain Allan
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Tsang Fan
Ulrich Werner
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