Automatic provisioning of distinct ring-tones for co-located telephones

An apparatus comprising:

• a controller for controlling a group of telephones, adapted to sequentially select each telephone from the group, to cause a presently-selected telephone of the group to generate an audio signal and simultaneously to cause other telephones of the group to acoustically detect the audio signal, to determine which of the group of telephones detected which of the audio signals generated by the group of telephones, and to use determined results to assign ring-tones to the group of telephones, including to assign different ring-tones to each telephone of a subgroup of telephones, of the group of telephones, that detected the audio signals of each other telephone of the subgroup of telephones.

An apparatus comprising:

• a controller for controlling a group of telephones, adapted to select from the group a telephone that does not have an assigned ring-tone, to select one of a plurality of different ring-tones, which selected ring-tone the selected telephone has not detected at a magnitude above a threshold value, to assign the selected ring-tone to the selected telephone, to cause the selected telephone to generate the assigned ring-tone and simultaneously to cause other telephones of the group to acoustically detect the ring-tone, until each telephone of the group is assigned a ring-tone.