Telephone call monitoring, metering and selection device

Abstract

There is provided a telephone call monitoring, metering and selection device, the purpose of which is to select the lowest-cost way to make a call from one point to another point. The user will program the possible carriers and rates from a standard telephone and the user will enter the time, date, taxes and other information after plugging in the unit. After selecting the destination phone number, the device will show the rates of all possible carriers and then allow the user to choose or select a desired carrier. Because carriers do not have the same quality, the low-cost carrier may not always be the carrier the user wants to select. The unit will display all carrier rates on a one minute call, five minute call, ten minute call and the like. The device will show the user on a real time basis what the calls may cost. The costing feature will apply to local and long distance calls. Also, the device can be programmed to keep a total of what the calls have been from a beginning of a billing cycle and previous billing cycles.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.