At+t Corp.

At&t Bell Laboratories

Walter Patrick Binns

Bruce Lowell Hanson

Nuri Ruhi Dagdeviren

Frederick Kenneth Schmidt, Jr

Andreas Constantine Papanicolaou

Cheng D Yu

Deirdre T Ryan

Khashayar Mohammadi

The invention provides a group message delivery system that includes a memory device coupled to a group message controller. The group message controller generates a group telephone number and a database corresponding to the group telephone number in the memory device based on first information received from a first caller. The first information includes a group list of at least one telephone number corresponding to at least one receiving party. The group message controller responds to a call by a second caller to the group telephone number by receiving second information from the second caller and delivering a message included in the second information to the at least one receiving party.

Group message delivery system

In a video telephony system, a coaxial cable network, which is preferably a part of an existing cable television system, provides a local link for the transmission of the video telephone signals between each originating and destination location and a respective 'head end' located on the cable company premises. Each of the head ends is connected to a 'point of presence' of a telephone interexchange carrier so that a connection between pairs of head ends, and thus between a pair of video telephone locations, can be made via a switched digital network maintained by the carrier. Certain of originating and destination locations comprise a standard television set, serving as the audio/video display, and a consumer-type camera or camcorder, serving as the audio/video source. Others of the originating and destination locations comprise ISDN video telephones which are connected to the various points of presence of the interexchange carrier via local exchange carrier telephone networks. The video telephone number for cable subscriber locations are administered to be the same as the standard ten-(i.e., area code plus seven-) digit telephone number used for regular telephone calls directed to those locations.

Bidirectional video telephony between cable television and switched

Growing community of inventors

Upper Montclair, NJ, United States of America

Walter Patrick Binns