Video telephony dialing

A telephone system comprising

• a switched telecommunications network,
• a plurality of voice telephone stations connected to said switched telecommunications network, each of said telephone stations having an associated local exchange carrier telephone number and said telecommunications network being responsive to receipt, from one of said telephone stations, of a signal representing the local exchange carrier telephone number of another one of said telephone stations for establishing a communications path between those two telephone stations, and
• a plurality of cable subscriber video telephone locations connected to said network via respective cable television distribution network connections, each of said cable subscriber locations having an associated video telephone number and said telecommunications network being responsive to a signal received from one of said cable subscriber locations representing the video telephone number of another one of said cable subscriber locations for establishing a communications path between those two cable subscriber locations, each one of said cable subscriber video telephone locations having installed thereat a respective one of said voice telephone stations,
• characterized in that the said video telephone number associated with said each one of said cable subscriber video telephone locations is the same as the local exchange carrier telephone number associated with the voice telephone station installed at that one location.

A method for use in a telephone system of a type which comprises

• a switched telecommunications network,
• a plurality of voice telephone stations connected to said switched telecommunications network, each of said telephone stations having an associated local exchange carrier telephone number and said telecommunications network being responsive to a signal received from one of said telephone stations representing the local exchange carrier telephone number of another one of said telephone stations for establishing a voice communications path between those two telephone stations, and
• a plurality of cable subscriber video telephone locations connected to said network via respective cable television distribution network connections,
• said method comprising the steps of
• storing for each one of said cable subscriber video telephone locations a data record which contains a) the local exchange carrier telephone number associated with a voice telephone station installed at said one cable subscriber location, and b) routing information associated with said one cable subscriber location, said information specifying a cable television distribution network routing from said switched telecommunications network to said one cable subscriber location,
• accessing said database means, in response to receipt from originating ones of said cable subscriber locations of signals representing the local exchange carrier telephone numbers associated with ones of said voice telephone stations, to retrieve the routing information associated with those stations, and
• establishing video telephone connections from said originating cable subscriber locations to respective destination ones of said cable subscriber locations based on the retrieved routing information.