Abstract: a telecommunications carrier other than the carrier of last contact is arranged to a) recognize that the telephone to which a particular call is placed is a disconnected telephone and b) provide different call treatment for the call, e.g., different call handling or different call features or services, as compared to the treatment the telecommunications carrier provides for the same call to the same telephone when it is recognized that the telephone is not disconnected. Advantageously, no effort is wasted in an attempt to complete the telephone call to a disconnected telephone. Such different treatments include 1) simply making no attempt to route the call to the disconnected telephone via the network of last contact, 2) routing the call to a secondary, alternate telephone, and 3) initiating transmission of a page to a pager that is associated with the owner of the disconnected telephone.

Abstract: A communications system is designed to allow a call waiting subscriber who is already busy on a first call to receive information associated with a message being recorded by a second caller attempting to reach the subscriber. According to one aspect of the principles disclosed herein, a one-way conference call is established between the second caller and the subscriber as the message is being recorded to allow the subscriber to eavesdrop on the message. According to another aspect of the principles disclosed herein, an Automatic Speech Recognition system may transcribe the message being recorded into ASCII coded data that is delivered to the called party. The received message allows the subscriber to effectively assess whether the first call in progress should be interrupted to answer the second call in waiting.

Abstract: The Multimedia Message System of the present invention provides revenue allocation between disparate sender-receiver service providers on a per message basis for a sender, connected to a telecommunications network of one service provider, sending a message to a receiver, connected to a telecommunications network of another service provider. Each message has a "message stamp" associated with it which allows for distribution of revenue associated with that individual message among service providers involved for transmission of that message. A Clearinghouse is utilized to issue the message stamps and process revenue allocation for each service provider according to the message stamps. The stamp is added to each message by the clearinghouse to provide for revenue allocation between the originating (sender) and destination (receiver) service providers. Removal or canceling of the stamp is performed by the destination unit that may additionally route the message to a mailbox (e.g.

Abstract: A call between a caller using a telephone device for the deaf (TDD), and requiring one or more types of expertise from a calling assistant, and another person, including a TDD user, is connected by automatically prompting the TDD caller for calling information, automatically identifying the expertise needed, including the language being used, selecting a communication assistant (CA) capable of speaking in the language and other expertise, routing the call to the selected CA, and connecting the call.

Abstract: A method and system for selectively routing incoming calls to a requested called party wherein the requested called party is at least one of a group of individuals associated with a plurality of telephones. A database system sends a menu to a calling party so that the calling party may choose an option which corresponds to at least one individual associated with the plurality of telephones. Based on the option chosen by the calling party, the incoming call is routed to one or more destination directory numbers where the requested called party is most likely to be found. The user programmed database includes call treatment parameters corresponding to the most likely location of the requested called party at any given time. Each requested called party is associated with a distinctive alerting signal which is applied to one or more customer identified lines so that the requested called party is uniquely notified of an incoming call.

Abstract: In a personal communication service (PCS) environment, where a call to a personal telephone number may be routed to a sequence of telephone numbers until the call is answered or abandoned, and where it is possible that the destination telephones indicated in the sequence may be disconnected telephones such that they are unreachable from any network, a method for avoiding wasteful attempts to route the call by a) determining if any telephone numbers of the sequence correspond to disconnected telephones, and, if so, b) skipping over such telephone numbers, i.e., those of disconnected telephones, so that no attempt is made to complete a PCS call to a disconnected telephone.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are disclosed for using information about a calling party's identity or the importance of a call to control the call waiting signal played to a called party that is busy on another call. Upon determining that a called communication station is busy on another call, information about the identity of the calling party is obtained from the calling station. This information is processed to determine call routing treatment, and particularly to determine whether a call waiting signal is to be played for the call and, if so, what type of call waiting signaling is to be played. The called party can determine information about the identity of the calling party from the call waiting signaling, and thus determine whether to interrupt the call in progress to respond to the call waiting signal.

Abstract: A call between a caller using a telephone device for the deaf (TDD) using a one of a number of languages and another including a TDD user is connected by automatically prompting the TDD caller for calling information, automatically identifying the language being used, parsing the received calling information in the appropriate language to determine a forward number, selecting a communication assistant (CA) capable of speaking in the language routing the call to the selected CA, and connecting the call. One embodiment involves storing the forward number before routing the call so the selected CA can press a single button to connect the call. According to an embodiment of the invention, the calling information is passed directly to a number of language specific parsers and the successful parser determines the language being used.