Abstract: In case of a disaster at one of a plurality of customer's locations, it is desirable to provide for a massive rerouting of telephone calls to that customer. A SafetyNet Service Reconfiguration (SSR) tool enables a network service provider to provide a recovery service for the event where a customer's business location becomes "non-functional". By using the SSR tool, the telephone network service provider can preplan how to reroute a customer's incoming calls to alternate business locations, or to the employees' homes. The preplanning includes storing the local central office recent change (RC) messages necessary to implement an SSR plan, in RC text files and in executable data files. The RC text files can be easily maintained, and new RC executable files generated, as the customer's recovery needs change. To invoke an SSR plan, the network service provider starts execution of the designated RC executable file, via a single SSR tool command.

Abstract: A system for alerting a plurality of telephones in response to an incoming call to a destination directory number. A handling switch sends a query to a centralized database requesting routing instructions, and the database returns the directory numbers of the plurality of telephones to be alerted for incoming calls to the destination directory number. The busy/idle status of all of the plurality of telephones is checked, and an alerting signal is sent to all idle telephones. The handling switch is notified as to which alerted telephone has an off-hook appearance first, and the incoming call is routed to that telephone.