At&t Bell Laboratories

At+t Corp.

Lucent Technologies Inc.

At&t Ipm Corp.

Paramdeep S Sahni

Ajay K Jain

Albert Friedes

Alok K Gupta

Susan M Zoccolillo

Barbara I Gaechter

Karrie Jo Hanson

Monowar Hossain

Alan Ira Schwartz

Walter Paul Zahray

I Grace Tseng

Joseph V Fodale

Shri P Jain

Carlos A Perea

Angela R Gore

Nancy A Catron

Robert A Koch

Ronald E Large

Andrew A Soong

Robert Finberg

Diane R Leighton

Susan E Grove

Lisa C Giulianelli

Hassan Dabbaghi

Nadine Grasty

Richard J Famulare

A system and method are disclosed for providing an automatic call-back when a calling party encounters a ring-no-answer condition upon calling a called party. An exemplary system includes: a first originating switch node (OSN) coupled to a first originating telephone call location corresponding to a calling party and, a terminating switch node (TSN) coupled to a destination telephone call location corresponding to a called party; a database coupled to the TSN for storing the called party's times of calling activity; a processor coupled to the TSN and to the database for processing the times of calling activity to determine a best time to call (BTTC) the called party (wherein the BTTC comprises a best exact time and/or a window of time) and providing the TSN with the BTTC; a signaling network for routing the BTTC to the OSN; and an adjunct coupled to the OSN for receiving the calling party's automatic call-back request and initiating an automatic call back to the calling party at the BTTC the called party. Upon receiving the automatic call-back request, the adjunct provides the calling party with the BTTC. The adjunct also requests the calling party to enter a time at which the calling party is most likely to be available to receive an automatic call-back and, if the time entered in response to said request is the best exact time or, within the window of time, the adjunct initiates an automatic call-back to said calling party at the time entered.

Automatic call-back system and method using data indicating best time to

In a network-based communication system, communication trunks are allocated based on a history of network use and global event calendar information relating to particular regions that the network system services. A trunk allocation database is used for controlling the normal day-to-day trunk allocations to assign the trunks among the various network services. A global event calendar database containing holiday and event information observed by various countries and regions is provided for dynamically re-allocating the trunk assignments for trunks servicing a particular country or region when a holiday or event for that particular region occurs. The global event calendar database also informationally provides network users calling a particular region with timely information pertaining to holidays or events in the particular country or region that the user has called.

Network communication system with global event calendar information and

A secure information retrieval system comprising three levels of confidential access to a database, wherein the first level is stored and transmitted in an unencrypted form, the second level is stored in an encrypted form but transmitted in an unencrypted form, and the third level is stored and transmitted in an encrypted form.

Secure information retrieval service (SIRS)

A method and system for industry and group-specific calling within a telecommunication system. The method of the present invention includes the steps of receiving, in a carrier network, a call initiated by dialing a group number from a caller terminal; accessing a database in the carrier network to determine an announcement corresponding to the group number; providing the announcement to the caller terminal to prompt a caller to select one of the group members associated with the dialed group number; interpreting a selection command received from the caller to determine a member number of a selected group member; establishing a connection between the network and a member terminal corresponding to the selected member number; and connecting the call from the caller terminal to the selected member terminal. The caller may terminate the connection between the network and the member terminal, and select a connection to other group members, without dialing any additional numbers. Information such as the selection sequence, connect time, and call status may be transmitted by the carrier network to each member terminal prior to connection to the caller terminal.

Method and apparatus for group-specific calling

An outbound call management capability is provided for a public switched telephone network by a network based outbound call management (NOCM) complex, which can be accessed by all subscribers to the public switched network through one or more central offices in the network. A predetermined list of telephone numbers is stored in a data base in the NOCM complex for each subscriber who uses the NOCM services. The telephone numbers are automatically dialed at one or more predetermined scheduled times. When one of the dialed telephones is answered, the NOCM complex sets up a connection through the public switched telephone network between the called party and one or more attendants at one or more telephone numbers specified by a customer of the NOCM services. The NOCM services are made available to any subscriber of the public switched telephone network by provision of a special access code which permits a subscriber who is a customer of this service to dial the NOCM complex which will then interact with the customer by responding to voice or DTMF commands from the customer. The customer may program the list of telephone numbers to be called and program the telephone phone numbers to be used by the NOCM system to connect awaiting attendants with parties automatically called by the NOCM system. The NOCM system customer may set the time for the execution of his calling program by the NOCM system, and may interrupt or otherwise influence or change the execution of his program. All of this may be accomplished without a need to purchase expensive outbound call management premises equipment or to retain the services of a special provider of outbound call management services.

Network based outbound call management

A unified and systematic approach is taken both to design of a virtual communications network within a carrier's telecommunications network, and to design the screening filters provided in the VCN data base which control the admission of calls to the network. For this purpose, telecommunications traffic information that is relevant for both the design of the VCN architecture as well as for development of the screening filters is aggregated and applied both to a network design tool that is used to generate the customer's virtual network configuration, as well as to a screening filter generator (SFG). The traffic information may include, for example, traffic data contained in network and customer premises equipment call detail records and billing data. In one embodiment, the SFG also receives output information from the network design tool, indicative of the on-net and off-net locations in the VCN, and information from a carrier data base that provides a weighting factor indicative of the incidence of fraudulent calling to different domestic and international destinations. The SFG is arranged to jointly process the traffic information as well as the fraudulent calling information (together with information relating to VCN design parameters, if desired) in order to generate screening filters that can be installed, and thereafter used, in the VCN to determine, on a call by call basis, whether a call made using the VCN is allowed or denied. Advantageously, the screening filters are designed so that they will minimize or reduce the possibility that the VCN will be used to make fraudulent calls.

Intelligent call screening in a virtual communications network

A system for completing a series of calls from a calling party to a plurality of called parties served by a common terminating switch and located in the same general geographic area, is implemented by a) establishing a first communication path from the calling party to the terminating switch b) establishing a second communication path from the terminating switch to the the called party using routing information received from the calling party regarding the called party c) bridging those two communication paths to form a complete connection from the calling party to the called party d) preserving the first communication path and reusing it to complete all the calls in the series.

Target area calling system

A telephone call initiated from a first network and directed to a second network at which network resources are temporarily unavailable to route and/or switch that call, is completed by a) estimating the anticipated time before these resources can become available, b) offering the caller the option of being called back, based on that estimation, c) calling back the caller when network resources are expected to become available, d) establishing a connection from the first network to the called party at the second network, and e) merging the two calls.

International priority calling system with callback features

In order to enable an '800' telephone number business subscriber to identify customers, whose incoming telephone calls were blocked, the Automatic Number Identification (ANI) of these calling customer is automatically recorded within the telecommunications network for later access by the business subscriber.

Recording of automatic number identification to identify lost customers

An enhanced '800' service automatically provides a second communications path between a customer and a business in order to provide additional product information, such as video information, to the customer. For example, upon receipt of a customer telephone call on a B-channel of an ISDN facility, premise switching equipment, of the business, automatically receives the customer's network address. This address is used to automatically setup the second communications path to the customer.

Enhanced ISDN 800 service

This invention relates to methods of establishing facsimile (fax) connections. When it is determined that a call is a fax call, a fax indicator is sent with Common Channel Signaling (CCS) messages for that call. If a call with a fax indicator is received in a destination switching office, then the destination office checks to see if the called number is a fax number; if not, translation is made to find the number of a fax station for serving fax calls to the called number, and the call is completed to that fax station. Fax calls may be recognized by a fax class mark in an originating message from an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line or a dialed prefix such as #, #3, or an alternative common carrier code (10XXX) from an ordinary line. Calls may be automatically redirected to a store and forward system on busy or no answer, routed to one of a plurality of alternative destinations based on the day and time, junk fax calls may be screened, and a fax message waiting lamp on the called (voice) destination may be operated. For international calls, a translation from voice to fax may be made at an egress gateway switch; the fax calls may also be automatically routed over low distortion international transmission facilities.

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Marlboro, NJ, United States of America

Paramdeep S Sahni