Internet protocol enabled multimedia mail system with reduced bandwidth requirements

Abstract

In a multimedia communications system (100), a multimedia-based answering system (200) lowers the amount of air interface bandwidth used to send multimedia mail messages. When a called party is unavailable, a user of a user terminal (102) is given an option to send a multimedia mail message for the unavailable called party (300, 302, 304). If the user wants to send a multimedia mail message, the bandwidth requirements for the call are renegotiated to reduce bandwidth for sending the multimedia mail message (306). The multimedia mail message is then transmitted over-the-air to a multimedia mail system (208), where the multimedia mail message is buffered, transcoded (if necessary) and stored until the called party retrieves it (308, 310).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.