Abstract: A telecommunications system is required by a system operator to have a high availability, especially in so far as central processing is concerned, as failure of this can render a significant portion of the system inoperative. A telecommunications system has connected to an interface at least two remotely attached computing platforms, each computing platform being arranged to receive, process and provide a response to each functional request from the interface, the system responding to the first response received from the computing platforms. The computing platforms may provide high availability, while themselves being low availability devices.

Abstract: Using a known Intelligent Network Architecture a service invocation message is addressed via a Sorter to an appropriate Server. After interrogating the caller when necessary, the Server may re-address the message directly to another Server within the same organization or consortium, which may in turn repeat the process. Thereby a Service Provider representing a large business organization or consortium offers a single umbrella service and is able to introduce new services or sources of information, and to cease, re-configure or resituate the existing services with no effect whatever upon public network or message network equipment.