At&t Bell Laboratories

Mark A Gauldin

Roger E Stone

George W Gawrys

Renato M Ermann

Richard L Asmuth

Marjorie P Yuhas

Douglas Harvey Riley

Melchior J DiCarlo-Cottone

Brian R Bimonte

Dattatraya G Raj-karne

A method allowing a customer to define its telephone service within flexible boundaries for calls directed to the customer. Within constraints imposed by the selected embodiment, the method reduces software development traditionally associated with the provision of new services. A plurality of independent call processing capabilities, such as announcement, digit collection, billing, etc., are provided at a switching office. A program defined by a customer is executed in response to each call to the customer. The program makes decisions based on the parameters of the call, such as time, ANI, information digits requested and received from the caller, etc., and links together the appropriate ones of the capabilities in the proper order to dispose of the call based on the call parameters as specified in the program. A customer service may be modified by changing the customer program.

Method for customer definable telephone capability

A method of controlling a telephone office serving a call to obtain a call processing capability not available at the office. A data base executes a customer program unique to a customer in response to each call to the customer. The customer program determines from call parameters how to process a particular call and instructs the serving office to perform specific primitive call processing capabilities to process the call. If the serving office is unable to perform a capability required to process the call in accordance with the customed program, the date base selects a second office which should be able to perform the capability. The call is routed from the first office to the second office under control of the data base and the second office performs one or more call processing capabilities under control of the data base. Call processing may be returned to the first office under control of the data base after a capability is performed at the second office. This is referred to as a service assist. On the other hand, call processing may be turned over completely to the second office, in which case it is referred to as a service handoff.

Telephone office service assist and handoff

Disclosed are schemes for selecting an interexchange telephone call carrier, selecting a route to the selected carrier, and establishing a call path on the selected route to the selected carrier in a multicarrier environment. To select a call route from a local telephone company switching office to a carrier switching office, first a route identifier is generated which comprises a set of keys to a data base for identifying therein a default route to the selected carrier. Then alternative sets of keys are obtained from data base by translating the class of service characteristics of the call and the called number. The set of keys identifying the default route is modified with those keys of the alternative key sets that are defined, to obtain alternative route identifiers, and the keys of the various route identifiers are modified by the carrier identification code. Route identifiers are then sequentially selected from the alternative and default route identifiers to obtain one route identifier that identifies in the data base a descriptor of a route that is defined. The defined route is then established, if possible.

Telephone interexchange call routing

Growing community of inventors

Wheaton, IL, United States of America

Mark A Gauldin