Bellsouth Corporation

Janine M Irwin

Julia B Torbert

Nailesh B Desai

James Madison Seymour

David C Sowell

James M Davis

Iris Y Chen

Ronald S Reuss

The present invention provides for a method of restricting access to authorized users of telephone service from a telephone at a particular location which telephone is accessible by more than one individual. The present invention provides for a method of activating a telephone line by entering a valid access code and deactivating the telephone line by entering a second valid code. Calls may not generally be placed from the telephone when the telephone line deactivated. Calls made from the telephone line after the telephone line has been activated by a valid access code will be attributed to the user associated with the access code. The present invention also provides for a method of routing calls which have been designated as escape codes or priority numbers although the telephone line is in a deactivated state. The present invention also provides a method for activating the telephone line by first entering a logon code followed by an access code which is associated with a user. The access codes may be further used to identify users for which toll calls are not permitted. If an authorized user's access code contains a toll restriction indicator, toll calls attempted by the authorized user when logged in under the user's access code will not be routed.

Multi-user telephone line

The present invention is a method that enables a business with multiple locations within a LATA to use a single number for its service. All callers dial the same number to reach the subscriber's business, and a network routes the calls to the most appropriate subscriber location based on the geographic location of the caller, time of day, day of week, and/or percent distribution among subscriber locations. The geographic location of the caller is determined using the calling party number (NPA-NXX-XXXX) and either mapping this number to a wire center (using the NPA-NXX) or to a block group (using the entire NPA-NXX-XXXX). An advantage of Area Number Calling is the granularity of block group routing. Block groups are defined by the Census Bureau and typically encompass a much smaller geographic area than a wire center. Block groups are defined by the Census Bureau for the entire United States. Block groups tend to encompass four to twelve blocks, and they honor natural boundaries, like rivers. This gives an ANC subscriber a greater degree of flexibility in defining which geographic areas should be routed to which subscriber locations. The present invention also provides a method of reducing the amount of geographic data that is transmitted to or stored on a database associated with the routing equipment by routing as a unit intersecting regions of multiple subscriber data tables.

Method for routing calls based on predetermined assignments of callers

Growing community of inventors

Duluth, GA, United States of America

Janine M Irwin