Telephonic communications – Telephone line or system combined with diverse electrical... – Remote indication over telephone line
Patent
1992-09-11
1994-11-29
Dwyer, James L.
Telephonic communications
Telephone line or system combined with diverse electrical...
Remote indication over telephone line
379107, 379372, 379375, 379 29, 379 32, H04M 1500
Patent
active
053696905
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telephone signalling and in particular relates to a method and apparatus for enabling a telephone to be accessed from a remote location.
2. Background of the Invention
When operating a public payphone system, one of the most important aspects is to keep the payphones available for use and in good repair. If a payphone becomes faulty or is broken through misuse or vandalism it immediately ceases to be able to generate revenue, and, perhaps more importantly, the lack of availability reflects badly on the operator. In some cases this bad publicity and service affects the operator's overall business, particularly where the level of payphone service is an intrinsic part of the public telephone operating licence.
The concept of a built-in self-test as a fault detection method, coupled with an in-built dial-up modem to report the fault to a management or service center, is well known. Such facilities are also used to send a routine status message to the management or service center at a predetermined time (usually during the early hours of the morning, or any other time when the likelihood of use of the phone is very low). This status message can provide a message indicating correct functioning of the telephone.
However, these methods will only work at a predetermined time, or reactively, and cannot give a totally up-to-date picture to the management office of the operational status of the payphones. Obviously each payphone could be programmed to run a self-test and report at frequent intervals, say once every hour, that it is correctly functioning, but this restricts the availability of the payphone to the consumer, and could seriously overload the telephone network capacity with an unnecessary high level of traffic from e.g. several thousand payphones providing very little new information.
An example of such a telephone signalling system is described in the present applicant's patent application GB-A-2,176,639. In this system all incoming calls within a predetermined time window are automatically answered before the telephone receiver has time to ring.
Another example of such a telephone signalling system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,741 (Fourdraine). In this system the remote telephone can be accessed only during a predetermined time window, such as between three a.m. and three-ten a.m. In this time interval all incoming telephone calls are deemed to be automated calls from a central location, and the telephone is caused to go off-hook. This is done in such a manner as to prevent ringing signals on the telephone line from ringing any of the telephones connected to the telephone line within the period before ring-trip occurs at the exchange. Outside this time interval the telephone responds only to normal incoming calls.
One major benefit of such a "polled" approach is that a payphone that has been reported as faulty can be checked remotely before incurring the cost of despatching a service technician. Clearly a payphone that does not respond to an interrogation would be considered faulty.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,827,501 discloses a telephone call screening apparatus which, on detecting a ringing signal, immediately answers the call. The apparatus generates its own local "psuedo-ringing" signal, but this is prevented from causing audible ringing for a delay period of 2.5 seconds. During this period the
apparatus determines whether a special dial signal indicative of a sales call has been transmitted. If so, an acknowledgement is transmitted and the apparatus hangs up. Otherwise audible ringing occurs and a user can answer the call. This arrangement has the disadvantage that all calls have to be immediately answered by the apparatus, and correct operation requires transmission of special dial signals.
It would be desirable to provide a method of instructing a particular payphone to carry out a self-test and report back, at any time of day or night, preferably without causing ringing of the telephone.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a fi
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patent: 4845741 (1989-07-01), Fourdraine
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Dwyer James L.
Fournier Paul A.
Mars Incorporated
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