Telephone answering machine in paging systems with automatic number identification based message operations

Claim 1

Telephone answering apparatus for a subscriber of a paging system, said apparatus coupled to a telephone network for automatically receiving telephone calls including corresponding paging messages directed to said subscriber, such telephone calls including corresponding source identification signals generated by the telephone network to identify the telephone numbers of the corresponding sources of the telephone calls, said apparatus also coupled to a paging terminal of said paging system, said paging terminal operative to transmit paging messages to a portable paging receiver of said subscriber, said apparatus comprising: means for storing a set of predetermined source identification codes; means coupled to the telephone network for automatically receiving telephone calls directed to said subscriber and for decoding the source identification signals thereof to generate corresponding decoded source identification codes; controller means coupled to said receiving means for selecting paging messages of the received telephone calls based on a correlation of the decoded source identification codes of said telephone calls with at least one of said stored set of predetermined source identification codes; and means for coupling to said paging terminal and governed by said controller means to direct said selected paging messages to said paging terminal for transmission to said subscriber's paging receiver.