Abstract: A wireless piconet transceiver is mounted in a vehicle, and a complementary fixed wireless piconet transceiver is mounted in a garage, service station, police squad car, etc., for communication with the vehicle when parked adjacent thereto. The vehicle establishes a temporary piconet network with the user's home piconet. Vehicle operational statistics are tracked and maintained in a centralized vehicle computer database. This database can be manipulated to store the data desired by the vehicle owner. Via a wireless piconet connection, this database can transmitted to another piconet device such as the owner's computer. This computer system can be part of a wireless piconet, such as Bluetooth, This provides the computer with the ability to communicate with external wireless devices such as a cell phone, PDA, computer, or a cordless telephone. This invention allows for the configuration, or selection of desired vehicle data to be tracked.

Abstract: In one embodiment according to the invention, a telephone includes an answer and hold feature, whereby, in response to a user input, the telephone answers an incoming call, issues an outgoing greeting and maintains a connection status. Thus, the called party can unobtrusively cause the call to be held in the connected status until a time when the called party can conveniently enter into a conversation. For example, a wireless telephone according to the invention may include a controller, a user input unit, and an outgoing message unit. The controller may be adapted to cause the outgoing message unit to output a particular outgoing message in response to an incoming call and a particular indication from the user input unit. The controller may be further adapted to maintain a connection status of the incoming call so that a user can communicate at a point in time subsequent to the initiation of the outgoing message.

Abstract: A system for, and method of, determining a condition of a battery and telecommunications equipment incorporating the system or the method. In one embodiment, the system includes: (1) a load controller, having a memory, that couples a load of a known magnitude to the battery and (2) a voltage monitor, coupled to the load controller, that measures voltages of the battery at first and second times and provides the voltages to the load controller, the load controller comparing a slope defined by the voltages to a model stored in the memory and regarding the battery to determine a condition thereof.