Telephone apparatus with caller identification

Abstract

A telephone apparatus including a decoder, a memory, a comparison circuit and an output device. The decoder serves to detect and decode telephone number information of a calling side transmitted with bell signals through a telephone line. The memory stores telephone number data of calling sides in correspondence with operation keys. When a call is received, the comparison circuit compares the output data of the decoder with the telephone number data stored in the memory. If a coincidence is detected between the output data of the decoder and the telephone number data of the memory based on the comparison result of the comparison circuit, the output device notifies a user that the call corresponds to one of the telephone number data stored in the memory. The output device includes indication units provided in correspondence with a plurality of operation keys, and a driving control circuit for selectively activating the indication unit of the operation key corresponding to the coincident telephone number data. Alternately, the output device may include audio data memory in which names of call sides are stored as audio data in correspondence with both the telephone number data stored in the memory and the operation keys, a speaker to which the audio data read out from the audio data memory are supplied, and a controller for reading out the audio data corresponding to the coincident telephone number data from the audio data memory and outputting the correct audio data.