Telephone conferencing systems

Details Telephone conferencing systems Telephone conferencing systems

1998-09-03

2001-02-20

Smith, Creighton (Department: 2742)

Telephonic communications

Special services

Conferencing

C379S205010

Reexamination Certificate

active

06192119

ABSTRACT:

This invention relates to telephone conferencing systems that enable a number of callers to participate in a conference by means of telephones.
Telephone or audio conferencing allows three or more people to participate in a single telephone conversation. Each person is able to hear all the other callers when they speak and the conversation can progress as if all the callers were in the same room.
Audio telephone conferencing systems exist for connection to both the analogue and digital telecommunications networks. These systems use either analogue bridges or digital signal processing to combine the audio from three or more callers and play it to all participants in the conference.
With the advance of digital systems, more complex algorithms have been employed to improve the quality of the speech heard by each caller. Some of these advances include automatic gain control (AGC), speaker detection and echo cancellation.
Existing conferencing systems have two basic market areas, business conferencing and social chatlines. Business conferencing can be provided as a public service by the network operator, or provided locally from a company's PABX. Chatlines are usually provided by independent service providers to callers who pay a premium rate for the call whilst accessing the service. The telephone numbers for chatlines are extensively advertised and there is no restriction on callers wishing to access the service, as long as the telephone being used has not been barred from initiating premium rate calls.
At present, there is no system available for residential or domestic use. In theory, the subscription services for business use could be utilised for domestic use, but these have to be booked in advance. Moreover, the initiator of the telephone conference bears the telephone charges for all participants; for domestic use, it would be preferable for individual participants to bear the costs of their own calls. Even if an automated system were to be developed which would dial out to desired participants (on the basis of telephone numbers input by the conference initiator), the charging problem would still exist in that it would be difficult (and, even if technically feasible, arguably unreasonable) for the call charges to be born by individual participants as opposed to the conference initiator. Moreover, even if this were to be acceptable, billing integration of the individual parts of the conference call could be difficult to implement.
According to the invention there is provided a telephone conferencing system comprising a voice services equipment having a processing means and storage means for storing identifying codes indicative of desired participants to a telephone conference, wherein the processing means is operable
(i) to request the identifying codes of the desired other participants from the initiator of the conference, and forward the identifying codes to the storage means,
(ii) to initiate telephone calls to the desired participants notifying them of the conference and requesting them to call back, and
(iii) to receive the returned calls, compare the identifying codes associated with the returned calls with those stored in the storage means, and enable connection to the conference only if particular identifying codes associated with the returned calls match those stored in the storage means.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the identifying codes are calling line identity (CLI) signals automatically sent to the system from the callers' telephones. Thus only those people who have been “invited” to the conference can participate, since all other telephones with different CLIs will be barred.
Since the participants to the telephone conference call in upon being invited to do so, each participant will bear the costs of their contribution to the conference call.
The telephone conferencing system can be utilised to initiate video conferences or data conferences, as well as audio conferences.


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