Central-office-enabled muting of telephones
First Claim
1. A method to enable and disable a first muting function, to mute sound signal transmission between at least one telephone and another selected telephone during a multi-telephone conference call, said method comprising implementing a system in a central office servicing said at least one telephone, which comprises establishing a keypad signal recognition system wherein a specific keypad actuation during said telephone call instructs said central office to enable said first muting function and wherein a second keypad actuation during said telephone call instructs said central office to disable said first muting function.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Disclosed are methods, systems and services that utilize telephone system Central Office recognition of specifically programmed user-initiated signaling to turn on and to turn off one or more muting functions for transmission and/or receipt functions of the user'"'"'s or another'"'"'s telephone. Particular embodiments include the use of such methods, systems and services in multi-party conference calls, including where a leader of such conference call can, by pressing keypad commands, actuate the enabling and disabling of transmission and/or receipt paths for one or more other members of the conference call.
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Citations
13 Claims
- 1. A method to enable and disable a first muting function, to mute sound signal transmission between at least one telephone and another selected telephone during a multi-telephone conference call, said method comprising implementing a system in a central office servicing said at least one telephone, which comprises establishing a keypad signal recognition system wherein a specific keypad actuation during said telephone call instructs said central office to enable said first muting function and wherein a second keypad actuation during said telephone call instructs said central office to disable said first muting function.
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10. A telephone system central office-enabled muting service, comprising:
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a. establishing a keypad recognition system that recognizes each of one or more keypad signals, or combination of keypad signals, from a telephone system user'"'"'s telephone as a user-provided instruction to enable or to disable one or more voice signal transmission and voice signal receipt muting features;
b. providing one or more types of central office-enabled muting services to one or more users of said telephone system, wherein each of said one or more types of services provides a specific set of muting options to said one or more users thereof; and
c. for said user provided with one of said one or more types of central office-enabled muting services, providing ongoing actuation of muting options within said specific set based on receipt in said central office of said one or more keypad signals, or combination of keypad signals, said signals, or combination of keypad signals, being user-provided instructions, to enable or to disable one or more voice signal transmission and voice signal receipt muting features. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13)
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Specification