Abstract: During a telephone call, a party to the call may signal (by, for example, sending certain DTMF tones (a wish to provide his or her location to the other party to the call. The central office responds to this request by accessing a subscriber record for the communication line (e.g., subscriber loop) terminating at the requesting party and sending location information in the subscriber record to the other party to the call. Depending upon the technology available, the location information may be supplied in-band or on a parallel datapath.

Abstract: When a caller calls a call busy called station, the caller may request that a message be provided to the called station while the caller waits. In such instance, the called station receives the message while busy with the other call. The message may be speech indications provided by the caller which are received by the called station at a volume normally associated with a whisper. The speech indications may be recorded from the caller and the caller given an opportunity to edit same before they are sent. The message may also be a text message where the called station supports text or has an associated text-based telephone appliance.

Abstract: An indication of urgency of a call is received from a caller. The urgency indication is communicated to the called party through a distinctive notification, such as distinctive ringing. The urgency indication may be obtained from a caller via a personal agent.