Bell Atlantic Network Services, Inc.

Richard G Backus

Robert D Farris

Stephen J Flaherty

Dale Lee Bartholomew

Denny L Hylton

Raymond Ian Millet

Faye M Smith

Jay C Lodsun

Christine D McDermott

Harrison K Wallace

Charles N Judice

Dennis A Minarczik

Colleen Harp

Bing N Der

John Andrew Herhei

Nolan Marcus Forness

Charles H Stier

Philip J Fischer

George J Dekelbaum

Daisy C Copp

Gerard J Sasse

An Internet type access system includes an autodialer for automatically establishing communications with a merchant's facility over a switch network while maintaining Internet connectivity over a packet data network. The autodialer, in combination with the merchant's server, coordinates between the Internet session and the newly established switched connectivity, the session history from the prior Internet session being supplied to a sales representative receiving the autodialed call. The sales representative is provided with a terminal for controlling the merchant's server to push data to the client in response to the interactive session simultaneously conducted over the switched network.

Method and apparatus for establishing communications with a remote node

A wireless transceiver connects to a telephone line network terminal, in place of a disabled subscriber drop cable. A second wireless transceiver connects to customer premises wiring, typically at the network interface device and in place of the drop cable. The wireless transceivers preferably provide a cordless telephone type link. The second transceiver presents a standard telephone line appearance to the customer premises telephone wiring. Standard telephone station equipment, connected to the customer premises wiring in the normal manner, can make and receive telephone calls, as if still connected to a wire-line type telephone loop circuit.

Wireless drop

A smart network interface device (SNID), connects between the drop cable of a telephone line and customer premises wiring. To provide backup for the telephone line service, the SNID includes a wireless-to-landline interface. In response to detection of a fault in the telephone line, a controller activates a switch in the SNID. The switch changes the connection of the customer premises wiring over from the telephone line to the wireless-to-landline interface. When service switches to wireless communication, the wireless-to-landline interface registers with the public wireless telephone network. That wireless network assigns a temporary directory number to the interface and instructs the public switched landline telephone network to forward all subsequent calls for the customer through the wireless network using the temporary directory. All subsequent incoming and outgoing calls to and from the customer premises telephone utilize wireless communication. To the customer, however, the service essentially is indistinguishable from service provided via the telephone line.

SNID with wireless backup

An Intelligent Peripheral (IP) is used in combination with both narrowband type services (e.g., voice mail) and broadband type services (e.g., video transmission) and may provide protocol conversion, message translation, speech recognition, message editing and/or message-to-text conversion. The IP has a gateway switch between the various internal processing modules and the network line or trunk connections. The gateway switch provides selective routing of incoming calls to the appropriate modules, some modules providing narrowband type services and other modules providing broadband processing.

Split intelligent peripheral for broadband and narrowband services

A digital network delivers multiplexed channels to a customer premises. Each multiplexed channel contains a digitally multiplexed data stream including digitized broadband information relating to a number of programs. At the customer premise, a shared processing system includes several channel selectors and program selectors. Each channel selector selects one of the multiplexed channels, and each program selector selects digitized broadband information relating to a selected program from a selected channel. A multiplexer combines the selected digitized broadband information from the program selectors into a transport stream. A transmitter system, for example comprising a digital modulator, a spread spectrum modulator and a broadcast antenna, provides a wireless broadcast of the digital transport stream throughout the customer premise and possibly one or more near by premises. Terminal devices within range of the broadcast receive the wireless broadcast and process selected digitized broadband information from the transport stream to present information relating to a selected program, e.g. on an associated television set.

Wireless on-premises video distribution using digital multiplexing

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Manassas, VA, United States of America

Richard G Backus