Method and system to provide telephony tones and announcements in a packetized network environment

Abstract

A method and a system of providing call progress tones in a packetized network include storing the call progress tones and pre-programmed audio deliveries at a first device and includes multicasting or broadcasting the tones and deliveries from the first device to a number of telephony-enabled devices. The multicasts are in a format that enable the telephony-enabled devices to individually control transmissions of the tones and deliveries to other devices, particularly calling devices for incoming calls. Typically, the audio deliveries include memory intensive signals, such as announcements and music-on-hold. The progress tones include conventional call status tones, such as ringback, busy and error tones. In one embodiment, the telephony-enabled devices are telephones to which the calls are directed. In another embodiment, the telephony-enabled devices include proxies that process the system-wide multicasts for telephones of the network. Optionally, all of the tones and deliveries may be multiplexed into a single data stream. The multiplexed multicast data stream is then processed when a particular tone or delivery must be extracted. Optionally, less frequent announcements can be multiplexed into a generally continuous data stream for periodic presentation to a particular type of caller, such as a periodic selection of a particular message that interrupts music-on-hold. In another possible modification, the data stream is not processed at a called telephone. Instead, the called telephone directs the selected multicast to the calling telephone, which provides the processing.