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US 6,766,004 B1Granted
Method and apparatus for coordinating ringing and audio announcements in a phone system
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorJohn H. Chiloyan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and apparatus are provided that receive a caller identification packet from a central office. The caller identification packet is decoded to produce caller identification information, which is used to identify an audio message. Before presenting the audio message to the user, the method and apparatus disables ringing of the phone system. After the audio message has been presented to the user, ringing is re-enabled.
Claims5
A method of providing caller identification information to a user of a phone system, the method comprising:
- receiving a caller identification packet from a central office along a phone line;
- decoding the caller identification packet to produce caller identification information;
- identifying an audio message based on the caller identification information;
- disabling ring tone generation in at least one location of the phone system by issuing a command from a computer to a base station;
- emitting the audio message by passing the audio message through the base station;
- and
- re-enabling ring tone generation in at least one location of the phone system where ring tone generation was disabled, wherein the ring tone generation is re-enabled upon the termination of a connection between the computer and the base station.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.