Abstract: The key to enabling cellular instant messaging is to identify that the cellular customer has turned their phone on or has turned their phone off in order to add/delete their name from the instant message buddy/friend list. To accomplish this without readily accessible network triggers or prior to deploying cellular packet data service is a challenge. To meet this challenge the present invention utilizes telemetry messages that indicate when a cellular phone is available on a cellular network. Thereafter, relevant cellular phones on a buddy list stored in an instant messaging database are notified of a cellular phone's availability.

Abstract: A method and apparatus to connect a group of users via a communications network for a conference call. An initializing signal from an initializing user is detected and the initializing user is allowed to select a predefined user group. The user group comprises a list of users and their associated phone numbers that is created by a user using an user interface of a web portal and stored in a web portal database. After the selected user group is retrieved the availability of each user listed in the user group, for a conference call, is determined by connecting to each user via a communications network, announcing the initializing user to the connected user, and requesting a response from the connected user to determine if the connected user is available for the conference call. The available and connected users are interconnected with one another to allow the users to communicate in a conference call.