The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 24, 1996
Filed:
Oct. 05, 1994
Gary M Berkowitz, Morganville, NJ (US);
Thomas H Daugherty, Succasunna, NJ (US);
Rand J Edwards, Chester, NJ (US);
S Mark Klerer, Edison, NJ (US);
Lyla R Meader, Chatham Township, Morris County, NJ (US);
Cary A Strohecker, Sr, Alpharetta, GA (US);
Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
An operations facility is provided for administering unsubscribed telephone lines and conserving the use of the phone numbers associated with such lines by associating a plurality of unsubscribed lines with the same telephone number and same switch line termination point. Advantageously, then, a plurality of unsubscribed lines may be inexpensively provisioned with soft dial tone, thereby allowing a potential telephone subscriber to interactively subscribe to and activate telephone service from an unsubscribed line. Moreover, the application of soft dial tone may be used to identify a network access endpoint that is being used by a customer, and thus improve the accuracy of the contents of databases used by the operations facility in the provisioning of telephone service by identifying incorrect data.