Universal telephone system and method

Abstract

A universal telephone located in a foreign country provides a consistent home country telephone appearance and functions for a caller visiting the foreign country. This service includes providing consistent dialing sequences, consistent directory services, and other operations that would be consistent with originating the call from the caller's home country. The universal telephone includes a smart card reader that receives a smart card presented by the caller, bearing information of the caller's ID, the caller's home country, and other information. A database of national telephone features that are characteristic of the caller's home country can be included in the universal telephone or can be contained on the smart card. When the caller inserts his smart card into the universal telephone, the caller's home country information is read from the card. The universal telephone accesses the database to obtain the telephone appearance and functions of the home country. The text of messages in the language of the home country is displayed on a display screen of the universal phone. The image of the dialing key pad is also displayed on the display screen. The action to be performed in response to each key is provided to logic associated with a touch overlay device positioned on the surface of the display screen. When the caller presses the touch overlay device at a location over the image of a key, the corresponding action is performed by the logic. Actions include forming a string of dialing digits in the home country's format, for transmission to a universal server, which translates it into a network code that enables establishment of the call.