GB2337666A

GB2337666A - Call handling in mobile telephones

Info

Publication number: GB2337666A
Application number: GB9810668A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Makis Kasapidis
Original assignee: Matsushita Communication Industrial UK Ltd
Current assignee: Matsushita Communication Industrial UK Ltd
Priority date: 1998-05-18
Filing date: 1998-05-18
Publication date: 1999-11-24
Anticipated expiration: 2018-05-18
Also published as: GB9810668D0; GB2337666B; WO1999060765A1; AU3944299A

Abstract

A mobile telephone is provided with means for transmitting one or more pre-recorded messages to provide an "on handset" answering facility. Messages from callers may also be recorded. A call remains connected following the playing of a message so that the called party can move to a more convenient location. An optional feature is "selective notification" in which the user is only alerted to selected incoming calls. The remainder may be dealt with by the answering facility.

Description

I- --- 2337666 Call Handling in MQbile Telephones The present invention

relates to mobile telephones and in particular the manner m which inconuing calls are dealt with by mobile telephones.

Nowadays most mobile telephone network operators provide telephone users with an answering service whereby calls to a mobile telephone which are not connected for any reason are diverted to a network operator's answering service facility. When the user next turns his phone on and logs onto the operators network, or after a suitable period of time if he was logged on when the message was taken but did not answer the cafl, the network notifies the user that a message has been left for him. If he is geographically located within his home network the message is automaticafly played back to him/her when he is notified, if he is roaming (different country or network) a short text message is sent to him that invites him to call a certain number to hear the message. In either case hearing the message incurs a cost for the user over and on top of the cost incurred to the calling party that left the message.

More recently, mobile telephones have been provided with an "on handsef' answering facility to play and record messages. An aspect of the present invention aims to improve this facility for situations in which the user simply needs to place himself 'm a more convenient location to take a call.

A first aspect of the present invention provides a mobile telephone having means for transmitting one or more pre-recorded messages to a caller in which, in response to the transmission of at least one pre- recorded message, the line of communication between the caller and the receiver remains open for a predetermined length of time. For example, in a telephone according to this aspect of the 1 1 V1 invent on, the handset can be manually instructed to accept a ca 1 (eg: ia a button press) but keep the microphone and speaker inactive, play a pre-recorded message, and then continue to keep the call active but the Microphone and speakers inactive -for up to a predetermined length of time. The predetermined lengh of time will allow the receiving party to find a suitable location in which to conduct a conversation before answering call. Preferably the microphone is not enabled following connection of the call until a manual operation, e.g. button press, is carried out by the user. It is envisaged that this facility would operate side-by-side with a network operator's answering service since the network operator's answering service would still be useful when the called party's telephone was switched off, the user decided not to respond to the incoming call at all or when the user was unreachable.

A telephone according to the invention might be operable to automatically transmit a message to the caller if the telephone is in standby mode and the call is unanswered after a predetermined time. However, in a particularly preferred embodiment of the invention, the telephone is operable to transmit the pre-recorded message to the caller only in response to a manual operation. This might be, for example, the depression of a button if the telephone user is unable to immediately answer an incoming call.

A telephone according to the invention could have means for storing a plurality of pre-recorded messages. Means could then be provided for selecting an appropriate one of said messages. The selection might be made according to the prevailing circumstances of the user. The selection means are preferably manually operable. For example, a separate manually operable device, e.g. button, could be provided for each of the prerecorded messages. Alternatively, the message could be selected according to the number of times of operation of suitable manually operable means.

A telephone according to the invention could have means for selecting one from a number of messages that can be played back to a calling party in advance of receiving calls. For example, if a user was about to go into a meeting, a message to this effect would be useful whereas a different message might be appropriate if the user was to be unavailable for a longer period.

A telephone according to the invention could advantageously operate 'm the manner of a conventional answering machine and thus have means for recording a message from the caller following the transmission of a prerecorded message.

A second aspect of the present invention provides a mobile telephone having means for responding to selected calls only. Thus, if a user was to enter a meeting which could be interrupted for calls from certain parties, the identification of those parties could be memorised by the telephone so that only calls from those parties were connected. Possibly, all calls other than those from selected callers would be diverted to a network operator's answering service. Alternately such calls could be dealt with by an "on handsef' answering facility. This aspect of the invention could be used in conjunction with the first aspect described above.

An embodiment of the invention will now be described by way of example only and with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

Figure 1 is a schematic block diagram of the basic components of a mobile telephone according to the invention; and Figure 2 is a Is a flow chart illustrating the operation of a telephone according to the invention.

In the block diagram of Figure 1, control signals are midicated by dotted lines and information paths are indicated by solid Iffies.

Incoming digital signals are received by receiver 10 and output to a digital to analog converter 11. From here they are routed via suitable amplifiers to a voice memory 12 and, via switch S 1 to speaker 13. The output from the voice memory 12 is further amplified and routed via analog to digital converter 14 and switch S3 to the radio transmitter, not shown. A microphone 15 is connected via an amplifier and switch S2 to analogue to digital converter 14. The telephone also includes an LCI) display 16, keypad 17, subscriber identity module (SIM) 18 and handset memory 19. The operation of the switches S 1, S2 and S3, the voice memory 12 and the LC1) display 16 is controlled by a micro controller 20 in response to information from keypad 17, SIM 18 and handset memory 19.

The voice memory may be any suitable erasable and programmable memory, such as an analogue or digital EEPROM or a Flash RAM.

When a pre-recorded message in the voice memory 12 is to be played back to the caller, the call is accepted, switch S2 remains open (i.e. the line is cut off), the voice memory 12 is activated for playback, switch S 1 remains open and only switch S3 is closed. If the user subsequently indicates that he or she is available to take the call, switches 1, 2 and 3 are closed so that normal two way communication between the caller and the user is possible.

When recording an incoming message, switch S 1 is open, switch S2 is open and the voice memory 12 is activated for recording.

When the user is recording a message to be played back to callers, switch S2 is closed, switch S3 is open and the voice memory is activated for recording at a specific location.

The SIM 18 is always present in current GSM mobile telephones in the form of a removable card which carries personal subscription information and usually stores a number of telephone numbers frequently called by the user. When the telephone is powered up, information from the SIM is read by the telephone. The functions of the mobile telephone can be manually controlled by the keypad 17 in conjunction with other buttons which are usually present on a mobile telephone.

The detailed operation of the microprocessor 20 will now be described with reference to Figure 2.

Step 21 in the flow chart of Figure 2 illustrates an incoming call. Assuming that the call is successfully connected, a decision at the telephone itself is made at step 22 as to whether the user has chosen "selective notification". In other words has the user indicated that only certain calls are to be alerted to him? If the answer is yes, then at step 23 it is determined whether the user has selected to be alerted to a call from the calling party. If the answer is no, then at step 24 the call is directed to the network operator's answering service. If the incoming call is a "selected call" or if selective notification has not been chosen at step 22, then at step 25 the user is alerted to the call, for example either by means of an audio signal or the handset vibrating. Following this. a first timer T 1 is started at step 26. L at step 27, the time T 1 elapses with no action on the part of the user having taken place, then at step 28 the usual procedure for dealing with unanswered calls is followed. This might be the termination of the call, the diversion of the call to a network operator's answering service or the payback of a pre-recorded message.

If a "keyboar&' input is registered before the time T 1 has elapsed, as indicated at step 29, for example the depression of a button on the handset the second timer T2 is started at step 30.

It should be noted here that an additional button could be provided on a mobile telephone, possibly at the side of the telephone away from the keypad, in response to which the timer T2 is started. Alternatively, the telephone might be programmed to respond to the depression of one of the existing buttons on the mobile telephone.

At step 3 1, the mobile telephone is waiting for additional keyboard inputs. M-hen the time T2 elapses at step 32, then at step 33 an examination is made as to how many key presses have taken place from the start of T 1 to the end of T2. In this particular embodiment of the invention, if the key is depressed three times, a first type of message is transmitted to the caller at step 34. A suitable message might be:

"I am sorry 1 am unavailable today, please call tomorrow. following this, the call would be terminated at step 35.

If the message selection button was pressed twice, the procedure continues to step 36 in which an alternative message is transmitted to provide a local answering machine service. An example of such a message might be:

1 cannot answer your call as I am attending a meeting but I will return your call during the next coffee break. Please leave a short message" then, at step 37 any message from the calling party would be recorded following which the call would be terminated at step 38. If the call selection button was pressed only once, then at step 39 the line of communication is opened but the telephone microphone and speaker remain disabled. At step 40 yet another alternative pre-recorded message is transmitted back to the caller such as:

1 will talk to you 'M a few seconds. Please hold while I make may way out the conference room" following this, a third timer T3 would be started at step 4 1. The time T3) would be chosen to be sufficiently long to enable the called party to fmd a convenient place in which to take the call. In response to a keyboard input detected at step 42, the microphone and speaker would then be enabled at step 43 to enable normal conversation to begin and the call would then be handled in the usual way. If, for any reason, the time T3 elapsed before the button was depressed as indicated at step 44, the call would be terminated at step 45.

Following the termination of a call, either at step 45, step 48 or step 45, the call would be terminated as indicated at step 46 and at step 47 the handset visual display would indicate the identification of the calling party, e.g. the calling party's telephone number, and the length of any message left.

As noted above, the advantage of an "on hand set answering machine" facility is that the called party has immediate and unlimited access to the messages which is also provided for free as no call needs to be established between the network operators answering service facility and the user. In addition, the user avoids the nuisance of the notification of a left message in the form of a call from the network which may come at an inconvenient time.

The advantage of "selective notification of calls" is that the user does not have to do this manually by looking at the telephone display and deciding what action is to be taken. This would be particularly useful in meetings during which the user MIght not want to check the display often if calls are received frequently but only to be altered for specified incoming calls. One possible modification of the procedure described with reference to step 1 would be for steps 3 6, 3 7 and 3 8 to automatically follow step 23 for "unselected" calls.

The delayed call response provided by steps 39 to 45 enable the user to very quickly switch off an embarrassing or annoying vibration or audio alert and still respond to the call after placing himself Mi the appropriate environment, possibly without others knowing he was leaving to respond to a call. The calling party is notified that the user has acted on the call and will respond shortly but cannot hear what the user is doing or saying as the microphone is not activated. This facility saves the user from having to whisper to the called party whilst trying to remove himself to a suitable location at which to take the call.

Selective notification of calls can be provided by selecting a subset of the numbers stored in the SIM and indicating whether the subset is active or not. For example in a SIM that can store 100 numbers, positions 2 and 35 with the numbers for the users spouse and boss may form a subset. This subset and its status, active or inactive, can be stored on programmable media on the handset requiring no modification of the SIM. When there is an incoming call the microprocessor checks the calling number against the numbers stored on the SIM, then if found and if a selective notification subset is active, it checks the number's position in the SIM agamst the position numbers in the subset and only if a match is found it alerts the user to the incoming call.

It should be noted that the message at step 34 might be used if the user does not want to overwrite existing messages when the voice memory is full and does not wish to divert to the operator's answering machine as this may ring back to notify of the message. This facility is most likely to be used when the identity of the calling party has been read from the handset display.

The idea of selective notification of calls can readily be extended to enable a telephone to respond to different calls in different ways. Thus, in an alternative embodiment of the invention, the user could designate a first selection of possible callers to be notified to him, a second selection, diHerent from the first to receive the message at step 36 and all remaining calls to receive the message at step 34. Thus, the message selection would not be in response to the number of manual operations, but a predetermined caller "heirachy" set up by the user.

Claims

1. A mobile telephone having means for transmitting one or more prerecorded messages to a caller in which, in response to the transmission of at least one prerecorded message, the line of communication between the caller and the receiver remains open for a predetermined length of time.

2. A mobile telephone according to claim 1 operable to automatically transmit the message to the caller if the telephone is in standby mode and the call is unanswered after a predetermined time.

A mobile telephone according to claim 1 or 2 operable to transmit the prerecorded message to the caller only in response to a manual operation.

4. A mobile telephone according to claim 1, 2 or 3 having means for storing a plurality of pre-recorded messages.

5. A mobile telephone according to claim 4 having means for selecting an appropriate one of said pre-recorded messages.

6. A mobile telephone according to claim 5 Mi which said means are manually operable.

7. A mobile telephone according to claim 6 having a separate manually operable device for each message.

8. A mobile telephone according to claim 6 in which a message is selected according to the number of times of operation of said manually operable means.

9. A mobile telephone as claimed in claim 5, 6, 7 or 8 in which the message may be selected in advance of receiving calls.

10. A mobile telephone as claimed in any preceding claim additionally having means for recording a message from the caller following the transmission of a prerecorded message.

11. A mobile telephone as claimed in any preceding claim in which, following connection of a call, the telephone microphone remains disabled.

12. A mobile telephone as claimed in claim 11 includig manually operable means for enabling the microphone following transmission of said at least one message and before the expiry of said predetermined length of time.

13. A mobile telephone operable to alert the user to selected calls only.

14. A mobile telephone as claimed in claim 13 Mi which all calls other than those from selected callers are diverted to a network operator's answering service.

15. A mobile telephone as claimed in claim 14 in which a pre-recorded message is transmitted back to all connected calls other than those from selected callers.

16. A mobile telephone as claimed in claim 14 having means for recording messages from callers.

17. A mobile telephone as claimed mi claim 15 having means for transmitting a different pre-recorded message to a set of selected callers other than the first mentioned selected callers.

18. A mobile telephone substantially as heremibefore described with reference to the accompanying drawings.