Telephonic communications – Reception of calling information at substation in wireline... – Having display unit
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-08
2003-09-09
Smith, Creighton (Department: 2642)
Telephonic communications
Reception of calling information at substation in wireline...
Having display unit
C379S142020, C379S215010
Reexamination Certificate
active
06618474
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a telephone switching system and particularly to providing to a customer a promotional message from the telephone switching system during a silent interval between ringing signals or after a subscriber alerting signal tone.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Call Waiting (CW) and Caller Identification (CID) are well known concepts in the telephone and cellular industry. With CW, a telephone or cellular user who is speaking with a second party on the telephone receives a subscriber access signal (SAS) tone, which is similar to a conventional CW tone, from the telephone company central office of the user when the user has another incoming call from a third party. The SAS tone is audible in the user's telephone or cellular receiver. After hearing the SAS tone, the user has the choice of ignoring the incoming call or answering the incoming call by pressing a preselected button (or the hookswitch) of the telephone. If the user answers the incoming call, the second party is placed on “hold”. Although the user is informed when the third party is calling, the user does not receive the CID information which typically includes the name and telephone number of the third party.
With CID, the telephone company transmits encoded information to the user's telephone (or the user's adjunct device connected to the telephone) between the first and second ring signals from the telephone company. This encoded information (CID information) includes the name and telephone number of the calling party. The user's customer premises equipment (CPE) connects to the user's telephone line and detects, decodes, displays and stores the encoded information. For the CPE to properly process the CID information, the telephonee must be in an on-hook condition when the CID information is received. As used herein, the term “on-hook” refers to the condition which generally exists when the handset of the telephone is resting on the hookswitch of the telephone and the term “off-hook” refers to the condition which generally exists when the handset of the telephone is removed from the hookswitch of the telephone.
The two concepts of CID and CW have also been combined to create CID with CW (CIDCW). CIDCW requires that the telephone or cellular user have a CPE (or the equivalent) connected to the telephone line. When the user is speaking on the phone with a second party and receives a call from a third party, a SAS tone followed by a CPE alerting signal (CAS) tone is transmitted from the telephone company central office of the user to the user's CPE. The CAS tone is similar to a dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signal, but has higher frequencies and is of a lower amplitude. The CPE detects the CAS tone and then transmits an acknowledge signal to the telephone company central office. The acknowledge signal has been defined to be the DTMF signal “D”. During the transmission of the acknowledge signal, the CPE mutes its own handset for a predetermined interval of time and the telephone company central office mutes the acknowledge signal so that the second party does not hear the acknowledge signal. Upon detecting the acknowledge signal, the telephone company central office transmits the CID information of the third party to the user's CPE. The CPE receives and displays to the user the third party's CID information and communication is re-established with the second party.
In both CID and CIDCW systems, the calling party may be allowed to invoke a “privacy” option to prevent delivery of the calling party's CID information (i.e. name & telephone number) to the user's CPE. In this case, the originating telephone company central office of the calling party transmits the CID information relating to the calling party to the terminating telephone company central office of the user (as is done for calls where the privacy capability is not invoked) so that the calling party's CID information is available for other network services (i.e. automatic callback/automatic recall) that might use it. However, the calling party's CID information is marked “private” so the terminating central office recognizes that it should not be transmitted to the user's CPE. The terminating central office responds to the CID information marked as “private” from the originating central office by sending a “privacy indicator code” to the user's CPE. The CPE responds to the “privacy indicator code” by displaying to the user the term “private caller”, “anonymous caller” or “unavailable” so the user can determine that the calling party has invoked the privacy capability.
It would therefore be desirable to have a system and method which would provide to the CID or CIDCW customer a promotional message (i.e. a company's name, product, slogan or website, etc.) instead of the conventional privacy message (i.e. private caller, anonymous caller or unavailable, etc.) when the calling party has invoked the privacy option to prevent the delivery of his/her CID information to the CID or CIDCW customer CPE.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, a technical advance is achieved by method and apparatus for providing to a Caller Identification (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “CID”) customer a promotional message during a silent interval between ringing signals from a local stored program-controlled switching office (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “LSO” or “Local Switching Office”) when a calling party has invoked a privacy option to prevent the delivery of his/her directory telephone number with or without a corresponding name (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “CID information”) to customer premises equipment (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “CPE”) of the CID customer.
In the present invention, after CID information of the calling party is received to the LSO of the CID customer marked as “private” from an originating stored program-controlled switching office (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “OSO” or “originating switching office”) of the calling party indicating that the CID information should not be transmitted to the CPE of the CID customer, the LSO sends intermittent ringing signals to the CID customer. Alternately, and depending on the LSO, the LSO may want to send a privacy indicator code following a first ringing signal so that conventional CID display devices can still be used along with the CPE of the present invention without either affecting the other. In continuance of the present invention, following a first one of the ringing signals to the CID customer, the LSO selects, sequentially, by any known technique a promotional message from a variety of promotional messages stored in an associate data base (or memory) and transmits the selected promotional message from the associate data base (or memory) to the CPE of the CID customer during a silent interval between the ringing signals, preferably between the first and second ringing signals. This stored program-controlled switching system (SPCS) to CPE transmission does not require any special customer loop; it occurs over the tip and ring leads of the CID customer loop. The CPE of the CID customer receives and displays to the CID customer the promotional message from the LSO during the silent interval between the ringing signals. The promotional message is thus displayed during the silent interval and remains displayed after the silent interval. The displayed message can state, for example, “Watch NBC Sports” or “Have a Pepsi Today” or “Shop Ralphs” or “Kentucky Does Chicken Right” or “Got Milk” or “NFL on Fox TV”, etc. The CPE of the CID customer subsequently stores the received promotional message in an associate memory for later recall from the associate memory and display to the CID customer.
Another technical advance is achieved by method and apparatus for providing to a Caller Identification with Call Waiting (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “CIDCW”) customer already engaged in a telephone conversation with a far-end caller via a LSO a promotional message during a s
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