8631654 Canada Inc.

Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc.

Douglas Anthony Deutsch

Keith Stanley

Bonnie P Hitzeman

A method is provided for passing information through a network during overload and subsequent actions to reduce congestion. An exemplary method includes receiving an origination request from a mobile device of a calling party, detecting an overload condition, transmitting a message request to a terminating network element associated with a called party in response to the origination request during the overload condition, receiving an acknowledgement of receipt of the message request, and denying the origination request. In this manner, high resource requests (e.g. a voice call) may be converted into lower resource requests (e.g. text or voicemail messages), or the resource request may be deferred to a more appropriate time.

Method and system for passing information through a network during overload

This invention relates to methods and apparatus for establishing the flexible connections required to serve collaborative Telestar service requests. Telestar refers to services frequently described as being Tele* services such as teleeducation, teleconsultation and telemedicine. A customer node, such as a doctor's office, is connected via a high speed link to a switch which in turn is connected to a broadband network for interconnecting high speed links. The broadband network is connected to a Telestar service provider node. The customer signals requests for connections within the Telestar service provider nodes. These requests are processed by a Tele* service controller to generate request messages to the source and destination nodes to establish a requested connection. Advantageously, the highly flexible arrangements needed for providing optimum Telestar service can be readily controlled by a calling customer.

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Naperville, IL, United States of America

Douglas Anthony Deutsch