Abstract: A telephone system provides personalized announcements to calling parties in support of branded products and services of the system and others during call processing to called parties. A processor coupled to the system includes a database of designated calling parties receiving personal announcements. Record means stored in the processor for each designated calling party define the parameters for each personalized announcement. Call processing means responsive to the processor initiate a call from the calling party to a called party according to the parameters for the calling party defined in the record means. In one form, audio means under control of the processor play the personalized announcement to the calling party during the pre-answer period of the call or until the call is abandoned or the line is busy.

Abstract: A method for analyzing international long distance dialing errors and automatically completing a call it the error can be determined comprises the steps of receiving a dialed country code, city code and directory number. A potential error is determined by comparing one or pairs of the dialed country code and city code or the city code and dialed directory number or the combination of all three elements with predetermined valid dialing sequences for the dialed digits. For example, an error can be located between the country code and city code when a foreign telephone network has added a digit, for example, to expand the number of directory numbers available within a geographic area. A list of obsolete country codes, city codes or combinations thereof is stored in memory along with updated country codes and city codes. In one embodiment, a corrected dialed number is automatically redialed without further action by the caller.