Abstract In providing personal telephone calling capability as a service, for reliability purposes, it is necessary to have available several independent meet-me systems, to provide redundant capability in the event of a failure of any one of them. Each meet-me system has at least 1) one meet-me bridge and 2) its own telephone trunks directly connecting it to the telephone network over which it receives return calls. A problem with doing so is insuring that the return call is properly bridged to the caller's call when a) the telephone number for the return call is a predetermined translatable telephone number and b) the particular one of the meet-me systems to which the caller's call is connected is determined only upon receiving in the network the call placed by the caller. To overcome this problem, at least each time a caller's call is routed to different one of the meet-me systems, the network routing data base which translates the dialed translatable telephone number of the return telephone call into a network routing telephone number is updated so that it will direct a return call for the caller's call to the same meet-me system to which the caller's call was routed. Advantageously, a hot-spare standby is not needed for each meet-me system. Instead, one additional meet-me system provides the capability to back-up the failure of any single one of the other meet-me systems.
A method for use in completing a first telephone call of a first party to a second party, the method comprising the steps of: receiving said first telephone call; then selecting a first one of a plurality of meet-me systems, wherein if one of the plurality of meet-me systems handled a most recent call to the second party and information corresponding to the one of the plurality of meet-me systems is stored in a network data base, then said one of the plurality of meet-me systems is selected as the first one of the plurality of meet-me systems; routing said first telephone call to said selected first one of the plurality of meet-me systems if said selected first one of the plurality of meet-me systems is available; connecting a return call by said second party to said first telephone call based on the information stored in the network data base.
Claim 2
Independent Claim
150 words
A method for use in completing a first telephone call of a first party to a second party, the method comprising the steps of: receiving said first telephone call; then selecting a first one of a plurality of meet-me systems, wherein if one of the plurality of meet-me systems handled a most recent call to the second party and information corresponding to the one of the plurality of meet-me systems is stored in a network data base, then said one of the plurality of meet-me systems is selected as the first one of the plurality of meet-me systems; routing said first telephone call to said selected first one of the plurality of meet-me systems if said selected first one of the plurality of meet-me systems is available; connecting a return call by said second party to said first telephone call based on the information stored in the network data base.
Claim 3
Independent Claim
67 words
The method as defined in further including the steps of: selecting a second one of said plurality of meet-me systems if the first one of the plurality of meet-me systems is not available; routing said first telephone call to said second one of said plurality of meet-me systems; and storing information in said network data base corresponding to said second one of said plurality of meet-me systems.
Claim 4
Independent Claim
67 words
The method as defined in further including the steps of: selecting a second one of said plurality of meet-me systems if the first one of the plurality of meet-me systems is not available; routing said first telephone call to said second one of said plurality of meet-me systems; and storing information in said network data base corresponding to said second one of said plurality of meet-me systems.