Cselt-Centro Studi E Laboratori Telecomunicazioni S.p.a.

Societa' Italiana Per L'esercizio Telefonico P.a.

Ottavio Bertoglio

Spiridione De Micheli

Alfredo De Bosio

Luciano Astegiano

Paolo Tiribelli

Aurelio Caccia

Fulvio Bosco

Dario Franco

Piero Lampiano

Riccardo Fidanza

Luciano Rosboch

Wouter M VanVeen

Antonio Melle

The equipment consists of one or more voice units (U1 . . . Un) each connected to a certain number of independent lines (E1 . . . En) connected to a telephone network (RT). Each unit presents an announcement data base (AA1 . . . AAn) which contains all possible announcements to be supplied to the subscribers, a computer (EL1 . . . ELn) which manages the research of an announcement in the data base (AA1 . . . AAn) and its sending to the subscribers (UT1 . . . UTx) and an interface (IEC1 . . . IECn) towards the network (RT) for the temporary storage of the announcements or part of them before the sending, the processing of the telephone signalling, the possible conversion into analog form, and the equipment supervision.

Equipment for sending digitally pre-stored voice announcements to the

A request generator, when operated by a telephone subscriber or by a processor at an exchange, briefly interrupts an established talking connection to send a trigger signal toward a participating station for activating an identity transmitter associated therewith to send back a characteristic code individually assigned to that station. The code, which may consist of up to 16 bytes, is fed to an identity receiver at the inquiring station or at the exchange for visual display and/or recordal. A subscriber's request generator is preferably disposed downstream of the corresponding identity transmitter, as seen from the subscriber station, and responds to an activating signal emitted by that subscriber with a frequency outside the voice band for sending out the trigger signal, thereby preventing a response to this identity transmitter. In the event of two subscribers sharing a common party line, a read-only memory in the identity transmitter of that line stores only one code but a logic network in its readout circuit modifies a predetermined bit of one byte, and if necessary a corresponding parity bit in a check word of the code, if the line is seized by a particular one of the two subscribers. When the establishment of a talking connection is controlled by a processor at the exchange, a centralized identity transmitter may have a read/write memory loaded by the processor with the characteristic code of a participating subscriber station and send it out in response to a trigger signal from a request generator at the exchange or at the other participating station.

Circuit arrangement for identifying telephone subscribers

A pay-telephone station equipped to handle local and long-distance calls includes a microcomputer which, at the end of a conversation or under certain conditions during a call, selectively collects predeposited payment items (coins, bills and/or prepayment entries of subscription cards) of different denominations calculated according to the debt incurred and to the denominations available to optimize the refunding of any excess to a user. The microcomputer also determines, upon the start of dialing by a caller, whether the initial deposit suffices for at least the basic charge on the type of connection (local or trunk call) sought to be set up and, if it does not, invites the user to make an additional deposit before aborting the call. The remaining credit balance is continuously signaled to the caller on a display unit and, even before actual collection, is diminished according to the applicable rate in response to each metering pulse arriving from the exchange.

Pay-telephone station with deferred collection

To facilitate the supervision of long-distance telephone traffic over an extended area, output signals from call monitors associated with a number of trunk lines are fed to respective detectors working into a common preprocessor in which certain parameters of toll calls carried by each of these trunk lines, such as number and length of engagements, number and length of conversations and number of metering pulses, are registered in real time with the aid of respective counters for subsequent transfer to a final processor. The contents of each counter are read out to a buffer memory, within the preprocessor, upon the termination of the respective call or at any time in response to an external command. The preprocessor may be duplicated in order to minimize the effect of malfunctions, with inhibition of the loading and unloading of the counters of either unit until a confirmation signal is received from the other unit or a certain number of operating cycles have elapsed. The final processor can be programmed to determine significant deviations of various aspects of the traffic pattern from a norm.

Centralized data-registration equipment for traffic supervision in

Selectively seizable operating units (e.g. switches, lines or coders), forming part of different groups A, B etc. of identical units, are monitored to detect any change of state in a unit of, say, group A followed within a predetermined test period by a change of state of a unit of, say, group B. From the occurrence of the second transition, and in the absence of a switchover of any other unit of either group during the test period, an operative association is recognized between the two units in which these transitions were consecutively detected. The monitoring of all the units under surveillance is carried out in time-division sequence by cyclically scanned sensors individually assigned to them.

Method of and means for identifying temporarily coacting units in a

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Turin, Italy

Ottavio Bertoglio