Abstract: A method and system of improved routing to WATS completes calls through a wide area telephone service using indirect routing. When a call is placed from a calling telephone station to a called telephone station, a telephone network attempts to route the call from the originating switch, on which the call entered the network, to a local exchange carrier serving the called station. If other routing paths in the network are unavailable or unsuccessful, a network processor recommends a routing from the originating switch to the local exchange carrier through a tandem switch and the WATS line of another telephone network. This capability provides a reduced incidence of blocked calls, such as may result from telecommunications system outages.

Abstract: The instant invention provides a number of approaches in which a virtual homing to overcome outages can be achieved whereby a single terminating destination or an egress node can be formed from multiple terminating switches that would allow the network to route calls based on the capacity, economics or survivability of those switches to accept the call. A first network processor (NP) approach includes a number of methods that relies on the processor of the dynamic control routing (DCR) network, and the switch based routing that directs a call to the appropriate terminating node. A second approach of the instant invention is based on the data access point (DAP) of the network. This DAP approach utilizes the intelligence of the network and requires that all call queries be directed to the DAP for locating the appropriate terminating switch for routing the call.