US 5,559,857 A · System and method for recognizing and routing telephone calls involving hearing or speech impaired persons

Abstract

A system and method are disclosed for recognizing and routing telephone call activity involving a hearing or speech impaired person. A long distance party is called direct using standard 1+ calling. The caller is first connected to a switching network which sends a query to a Universal Subscriber Data Structure database using the caller's Automatic Number Identification (ANI) and the Dialed Long Distance Number (DLN) of the called party. The database analyzes the ANI and the DLN and responds with the caller's and the called party's profiles. If one of the parties is identified as hearing or speech impaired, the call is routed to an adjunct which connects the call to an appropriate AT&T Operator Services for the Deaf (OSD) or Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) center, whereupon the conversation can be relayed between the hearing or speech impaired party and the voice party. During this time, the adjunct can monitor the call for a particular subscriber's feature interaction and route the call to an appropriate switch in the network based on the feature invoked by that party. A second and third database connected to the adjunct can verify feature subscriptions and perform calling card validation, respectively.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A system for recognizing and routing telephone call activity involving a hearing or speech impaired person, comprising:

a switching network having one or more switches for routing telephone call activity, said telephone call activity having been initiated by a caller using 1+ calling;
the switching network coupled to an originating telephone call location and a destination telephone call location;
a first database means coupled to the switching network for analyzing origination and destination information associated with the telephone call activity so as to retrieve a profile of the parties involved in said telephone call activity;
a signaling network coupling the switching network with the first database means for transmitting the origination and destination information from said switching network to said first database means, and for transmitting said profile from said database means to said switching network;
an adjunct coupled to the switching network for controlling routing of the telephone call activity in the system;
a first interface for routing the calling activity from the switching network to the adjunct in response to said profile indicating that one of the parties involved in said telephone call activity is hearing or speech impaired;
and
a relay center operably connected to the adjunct for servicing the telephone call activity when a hearing or speech impaired person is involved.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for recognizing and routing telephone calls involving hearing or speech impaired persons

Life of this patent

System and method for recognizing and routing telephone calls involving hearing or speech impaired persons

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims16