American Telephone & Telegraph Co., At&t Bell Laboratories

Ross M Richardson

Thomas Michael Bauer

Thomas A Dunn

Travis H Gordon

Elliott Baral

Chun P Tam

Jonathan D Dharmapalan

Apparatus and method are disclosed for providing a non-presubscription subaccount billing service utilized by customers on a 'per call' or 'as needed' basis. A calling customer initiates the service by dialing '0' plus the directory number of the called line. The local office serving the calling line recognizes the call as an operator-designated call and forwards the call along with the identification number of the calling line and the directory number of the called line to an operator system. The operator system prompts the calling line to enter additional call information. The calling customer enters a service activation code such as '15' and a two-digit subaccount billing number assigned by the customer. Receiving the service activation code and the subaccount billing number, the operator system activates the service by setting a subaccount billing indicator in an automatic message accounting record and extends the call to the called line. Upon completion of the call, the operator system includes the connect time, elapsed time, calling line identification number, called line directory number, and subaccount billing number for the call into the AMA record. The record along with others is forwarded to a revenue accounting office where a billing system sorts the AMA records by subaccount billing numbers and prepares a billing statement with the details of each call listed for each subaccount billing number assigned by the customer.

Communication services method and apparatus

A method and apparatus for setting up a digital broadcast call from a transmitting station to a group of receiving stations over a public switched network. A time slot interchange unit (TSIU) is used to replicate a signal, received from a transmitting station at an input port of the TSIU, to a group of output ports of the TSIU for transmission to a group of receiving stations. A data base, shared by a group of switching systems of the public switched network, includes data, activated during a preselected period of time, to translate each of two preselected numbers to one of two corresponding internal routing numbers of the switched network for accessing the input port and output ports of the TSIU, respectively. When the transmitting station dials the first preselected number and each of the receiving stations dials the second preselected number, the data base translates these numbers into the corresponding internal routing numbers for setting up a connection from the transmitting and receiving stations to the incoming port and the outgoing ports, respectively, of the TSIU. Advantageously, the broadcast circuit is made available to the broadcast conferees for a period of time limited by the active time of the translations in the data base.

Broadcast conferencing arrangement

Growing community of inventors

Sea Bright, NJ, United States of America

Ross M Richardson