DE29603452U1 - Telephone booth with electronic information - Google Patents

Description

Company HELiCOM Development Company for Telecommunications and Media Technology mbH, An der alten Ziegelei 28, 48157 Münster

"Telephone booth with electronic information"

The innovation relates to a telephone booth according to the preamble of claim 1.

Such telephone booths are known from practice. They

contain a known telephone device, which can be operated using coins or a chip card. The optical display is used, for example, to show the dialled telephone number, to show the telephone charges already used or to show the remaining

Remaining credit is used or for user guidance in the form of appropriate requests to the user.

A telephone booth in the sense of this innovation is understood to be an arrangement that includes the telephone device described and the

A shielding system enables telephone calls to be made with as little disruption as possible, whereby such telephone booths are accessible to a large group of users, for example in restaurants, hotels or in public places.
25

The problem with the well-known telephone booths is that the telephone books are not usable due to violence or that these telephone books have been removed completely. The user therefore often has the problem of finding the desired telephone number before making a call, which is often

leads to undesirably long waiting times.

The innovation is based on the task of improving a typical telephone booth so that it provides a quickly accessible and vandal-proof information

system includes.

This problem underlying the innovation is solved by a telephone booth with the features of claim 1.

In other words, the innovation proposes to do away with printed telephone books because of the disadvantages mentioned above and to provide telephone information instead. In addition to the still existing person-manned information service of the telephone company, this provides a replacement for the often mutilated or removed telephone book, which immediately provides the telephone cell user with

is accessible, even if the staffed information service is overloaded and has corresponding waiting times.

Fastest possible access to the desired information

mation is possible if the memory is located in the telephone device, as this avoids two simultaneous accesses to the memory. For example, it is conceivable to design the memory in chip form, so that each telephone device in a telephone booth according to the innovation has one or

has several corresponding memory chips.

Alternatively, it is conceivable to allocate a common memory to several telephone booths, with data connections from the individual telephone booths to the externally arranged

memory. In order to enable the desired fast access times to the memory, it is advantageous not to assign all telephone booths, but only groups of telephone booths to a common memory. In public facilities in which a group of telephone

cells, this group can be assigned its own memory, so that, for example, a few telephone booths or a maximum of several dozen telephone booths access this shared memory. Due to the technically possible speed of the memory access, this results in the

user a not significant delay, so that the

desired rapid flow of information can also be ensured under these conditions. Such a group-based centralized storage arrangement has the advantage that a considerable time saving is possible when updating the storage content, because a

The number of memories that has been significantly reduced to match the number of telephone booths needs to be updated.

In a further embodiment of such an external storage device, it can be provided not only to provide a central storage device for a group of telephone booths within a building, but also for an even larger number of telephone booths, whereby the number of telephone booths to be connected to a storage device depends essentially only on the speed of the information transmission or on the

The speed of memory access is determined in order to maintain a time delay that is acceptable to the user when querying information.

A cost-effective update of the memory can thus

It should be possible for the memory to be erasable and overwritable, so that the memory does not have to be completely replaced, as is the case with printed telephone books. Such overwritable capability can also be provided for when the memory is designed in chip form.

Advantageously, the optical display can be designed not only alphanumerically, but also graphically. This makes it possible to simplify user guidance.

The input of information can be simplified by not providing a large keyboard with separate keys for a large number of special functions that may be provided, but by using the keyboard in conjunction with the optical display surface as a so-called touch screen.

In this way, the meaning content can be

individual keys, whereby this change is shown by the display and whereby the individual key is not formed by a moving component, but by a touch-sensitive design of the surface of this display. 5

Advantageously, the storage can contain not only the entries of a telephone directory that concerns the municipality in which the telephone box is installed, but also the entries of all telephone subscribers in the state in which the telephone box is installed. In this way, the logistics of the storage

simplified, since the same memory content is provided for all telephone booths. Furthermore, this measure provides the user with a significantly expanded range of information compared to the telephone books provided in the telephone booths.

Claims (7)

HABBEL &&EEgr;&Agr;&Bgr;&Bgr;&idiagr;&iacgr;* WVWinq. h.-q. smack PATENT ATTORNEYS DIPL.-INQ. LUTZ HABBEL „ , , ^ ₁ EUROPEAN PATENT ATTORNEYS PO Box 3429 ♦ 48019 Münster DIPL.-QEOQR. PETER HABBEL TELEPHONE (0251) 535 780 * FAX (0251) 531 996 OUR FILE: (please angcbsnj H 176/1 8709 lU/SC Münster, 23 February 1996 Company HELICOM Development Company for Telecommunications and Media Technology mbH, An der alten Ziegelei 28, 48157 Münster 20 "Telephone booth with electronic information" Protection claims: 1. Telephone booth, with a telephone device which has an optical 25 display for showing alphanumeric characters and a Keyboard, characterized in that the telephone device is associated with a memory which contains the information of a telephone directory and an electronic circuit which, depending on a keyboard input, 30 retrieves information from the memory and displays it on the display represents. EM8151 MUNSTER. 2. Telephone booth according to claim 1, characterized in that the memory is arranged in the telephone device. 3. Telephone booth according to claim 1, characterized by a Data connection to the storage, whereby the storage is external is arranged. 4. Telephone booth according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the memory is designed to be erasable and overwritable. 5. Telephone booth according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the optical display is also designed to display graphics. 6. Telephone booth according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the keypad in conjunction with the optical display is designed as a touch screen. 7. Telephone booth according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the memory contains the names and corresponding telephone numbers of all subscribers of a state.