Abstract: A telecommunications system allows multiple users to place and charge telephone calls to personal debit accounts without requiring specially designed telephones or "smart" cards. The system keeps track of the cost of each call, including applicable taxes, in real time and notifies the user when the account balance approaches zero. The system allows the user to restore the account balance in real time either manually or automatically by charging the increase to a commercial credit card. The system has one or more local area networks with means for receiving an inbound call and means for performing-a function in response to the inbound call, where both means perform concurrent processing.