At+t Corp.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Frank C LaPorta

William Henry Stenger, Sr

Saundra V Bass

Andre K Crump

David Bruce Kerr

Donald LeRoy Blosser

Ted Michael Ricci

Pamela J Lauber

Thomas L Russell, Jr

Percy B Brown

Richard E LeCronier

Wen-Ping Ying

Elliott Baral

Reuben D Hauptman

Randall H Nelson

Richard J Jaeger, Jr

A facility is disposed in a telecommunications network to provide an alternative to retrying the placing of a call to a telephone station when a busy signal is encountered. More particularly, if a subscriber places a telephone call to a called station set that is busy with another telephone call, then the facility notes that fact and terminates the subscriber's telephone call. Thereafter, the facility places a telephone call to the called station and, when the call is answered, announces at least the calling subscriber's telephone number and allows the called party to optionally extend the call back to the original calling subscriber. If the call is not answered, then the call back is terminated, and the placement of another call to the called station is rescheduled for a subsequent time.

Communications system call complete arrangement

This invention relates to arrangements for providing a new spontaneous voice message service to any telephone customer at any telephone station when that customer encounters any destination that is busy or that does not answer. When a customer having a dual tone multifrequency (DTMF) station calls any destination that is busy or does not answer, the customer is invited, via an announcement identifying the new service, to record the caller's voice message. The announcement accompanies the returned busy tone or audible ring signal. The customer keys *867(=*VMS) and is then connected to a Voice Message Operations Center (VMOC) which prompts the customer to record the message. Advantageously, customers need not redial a VMOC number, their own number, and a destination number to reach a VMOC for storing the video message; the added convenience of this arrangement should stimulate substantial additional use of voice message service. The announcement, at very low cost, makes the customers aware of the service at the time they are most likely to use the service.

Spontaneous voice and data messaging

Growing community of inventors

Millington, NJ, United States of America

Frank C LaPorta