At+t Corp.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Alok K Gupta

Paramdeep S Sahni

Ajay K Jain

Bruce E McNair

Monowar Hossain

Barry S Seip

Alan Ira Schwartz

Patricia D Saleh

Shri P Jain

Nadine K Grasty

Edward S Chang

A secure information retrieval system comprising three levels of confidential access to a database, wherein the first level is stored and transmitted in an unencrypted form, the second level is stored in an encrypted form but transmitted in an unencrypted form, and the third level is stored and transmitted in an encrypted form.

Secure information retrieval service (SIRS)

A method and system for industry and group-specific calling within a telecommunication system. The method of the present invention includes the steps of receiving, in a carrier network, a call initiated by dialing a group number from a caller terminal; accessing a database in the carrier network to determine an announcement corresponding to the group number; providing the announcement to the caller terminal to prompt a caller to select one of the group members associated with the dialed group number; interpreting a selection command received from the caller to determine a member number of a selected group member; establishing a connection between the network and a member terminal corresponding to the selected member number; and connecting the call from the caller terminal to the selected member terminal. The caller may terminate the connection between the network and the member terminal, and select a connection to other group members, without dialing any additional numbers. Information such as the selection sequence, connect time, and call status may be transmitted by the carrier network to each member terminal prior to connection to the caller terminal.

Method and apparatus for group-specific calling

A facility is provided which implements a 'hold-for-pickup' function in the delivery of a data message, e.g., a facsimile. Particularly, the facility associates a data message that it receives from a sender with a respective confirmation number and sends the confirmation number to the sender. Thereafter, the facility transmits the message only to a receiver who enters the confirmation number when requested to do so. The facility also provides a number of other features, such as allowing the sender to specify the number of receivers that will receive the data message. Another feature associates a received data message with a plurality of confirmation numbers. In this way, a user may associate the confirmation numbers with respective receivers. The receivers may then obtain a copy of the sender's data message from the facility by entering their respective confirmation numbers when requested to do so.

Data message storage and pick up service

A unified and systematic approach is taken both to design of a virtual communications network within a carrier's telecommunications network, and to design the screening filters provided in the VCN data base which control the admission of calls to the network. For this purpose, telecommunications traffic information that is relevant for both the design of the VCN architecture as well as for development of the screening filters is aggregated and applied both to a network design tool that is used to generate the customer's virtual network configuration, as well as to a screening filter generator (SFG). The traffic information may include, for example, traffic data contained in network and customer premises equipment call detail records and billing data. In one embodiment, the SFG also receives output information from the network design tool, indicative of the on-net and off-net locations in the VCN, and information from a carrier data base that provides a weighting factor indicative of the incidence of fraudulent calling to different domestic and international destinations. The SFG is arranged to jointly process the traffic information as well as the fraudulent calling information (together with information relating to VCN design parameters, if desired) in order to generate screening filters that can be installed, and thereafter used, in the VCN to determine, on a call by call basis, whether a call made using the VCN is allowed or denied. Advantageously, the screening filters are designed so that they will minimize or reduce the possibility that the VCN will be used to make fraudulent calls.

Intelligent call screening in a virtual communications network

A subscriber can dynamically provision, i.e., assign desired characteristics to any 'target station', which is an active phone accessible to a telecommunications network. A call thereafter originated from the target station (including a pay phone or a mobile phone) then can use customized features (for example, speed calling, conferencing, account code dialing) and take advantage of special corporate billing arrangements (for example, SDN, WATS and MEGACOM). The identity of the target station with respect to the communications network (e.g., the Automatic Number Identification (ANI) of the station) is not changed. Initially, a service profile is created and stored for each subscriber, containing information describing desired features and billing options. Thereafter, the characteristics of a particular target station are changed by an activation process that can be initiated from any location, whereby the ANI associated with the target station is entered into the ANI trigger table in an intelligent switch on which that station is homed, and the service profile is loaded into a database. When a call is originated in the target station, information in the database is applied to the switch to provide the desired characteristics.

Growing community of inventors

Marlboro, NJ, United States of America

Alok K Gupta