JP2000049962A - Communication terminal - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide the communication terminal by which the operator grasps the reason why the connection to a communication provider is impossible. SOLUTION: A facsimile equipment 20 is provided with a function of internet communication in addition to a conventional facsimile communication function and a provider telephone number table 7a in a RAM 7 stores a plurality of telephone numbers of a plurality of providers. In the case that an NCU 11 is used to make dialing to a plurality of telephone numbers via a public telephone line L automatically and the connection is impossible, the telephone number of disabled connection is displayed on a display section 4 and an image recording section 3 is used an recorded on recording paper. Furthermore, in the case that telephone numbers are dialed by using the NCU 11 and one of them is connected, the connected telephone number and the unconnected telephone numbers are displayed on the display section 4 and an image recording section 3 is used to record the result on recording paper.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a communication terminal device for performing communication via a network of a communication connection company, and more particularly to an Internet connection function capable of transmitting and receiving e-mail by connecting to a computer communication network such as the Internet. The present invention relates to a communication terminal device with an e-mail function, such as a facsimile device with a key.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, computer communication networks such as the Internet have become widespread. The reason is that the computer network is excellent in the error correction function, and the user is required to pay for the communication with the nearest contract provider (referred to as a communication connection company to the computer network) (line usage fee and provider's fee). Cost), it is possible to communicate with computers not only in Japan but also worldwide.

[0003] Since the conventional facsimile communication procedure is different from that of the computer communication using the computer communication network as described above, it is not possible to directly communicate from the facsimile apparatus to the computer communication network. However, even if image data is normally transmitted / received by facsimile communication, for example, TIFF (Tagged Image File)
Format) data can be transmitted and received by a facsimile apparatus via a computer communication network as long as the data is converted into e-mail format data such as the e-mail format.

[0004] Under such circumstances, facsimile messages can be transmitted and received as electronic mail via Internet communication, and communication terminals with an electronic mail function, particularly facsimile apparatuses, used for such purposes have been developed. .

[0005]

However, when a telecommunications service provider adds or maintains a line, the telephone number may change. In this case, the above-mentioned communication terminal device cannot be connected even if dialed many times, but there is a problem that the user cannot understand why the communication cannot be performed.

An object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems and to provide a communication terminal device which enables an operator to grasp the reason why a connection cannot be established with a communication service provider.

[0007]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a communication terminal apparatus comprising: a storage unit for storing a plurality of telephone numbers of a communication connection company; Automatic dialing means for dialing a plurality of telephone numbers by the automatic dialing means, and notifying means for notifying of the telephone number which could not be connected when connection is not possible as a result of dialing the plurality of telephone numbers.

[0008] Further, the communication terminal device according to the second aspect is the communication terminal device according to the first aspect, wherein the notifying means includes:
When a plurality of telephone numbers are dialed by the automatic dial means and any one of the telephone numbers can be connected, the connected telephone number and the unconnected telephone number are notified.

Further, the communication terminal device according to claim 3 is
3. The communication terminal device according to claim 1, further comprising an operation unit for deleting or correcting at least one of the plurality of telephone numbers stored in the storage unit when the notification unit notifies the telephone number. It is characterized by having.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In the following embodiment, an example of a facsimile apparatus with an Internet connection function that is configured to transmit image data to be transmitted by facsimile as an electronic mail will be described.
The Internet is used as a computer communication network.

<Embodiment> FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a facsimile apparatus 20 with an Internet connection function according to an embodiment of the present invention. The facsimile apparatus 20 of this embodiment has a function of enabling Internet communication in addition to a conventional facsimile communication function of the G3 system or the like, and a provider telephone number table 7a in the RAM 7.
Stores the plurality of telephone numbers of the provider and
If a connection cannot be made as a result of automatically dialing a plurality of telephone numbers through the public telephone line L using the telephone number, the telephone number that could not be connected is displayed on the display unit 4 and recorded on recording paper using the image recording unit 3. It is characterized by doing. Also, N
When a plurality of telephone numbers are dialed using the CU 11 and one of them can be connected, the connected telephone number and the unconnected telephone number are displayed on the display unit 4 and the image recording unit 3 is used. It is recorded on a recording paper, and at this point, at least one of the plurality of telephone numbers in the provider telephone number table 7a can be deleted or corrected using the operation unit 5 in the display state.

In FIG. 1, a facsimile machine 20 comprises
It has a facsimile communication function such as the conventional G3 system, and has an Internet connection function and an e-mail function. The main control unit 1 is specifically constituted by a CPU, is connected to the following hardware units via a bus 13, controls them, and executes various software functions to be described later. The image reading unit 2 reads an original with a scanner using a CCD or the like, and outputs dot image data converted to binary black and white. The image recording unit 3 is a printer device of an electrophotographic system or the like, and prints out and records image data received from another facsimile device by facsimile communication as a hard copy. The display unit 4 is a display device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a CRT display, and displays an operation state of the facsimile machine 20, and displays image data of a document to be transmitted and received image data. .

An operation unit 5 includes character keys, dial numeric keys, and dial keys necessary for operating the facsimile machine 20.
It has speed dial keys, one-touch dial keys, and various function keys. In addition, by making the above-mentioned display unit 4 a touch panel type, this operation unit 5
Some or all of the various keys may be substituted.

The ROM 6 stores in advance various software programs necessary for the operation of the facsimile machine 20 and executed by the main control unit 1, wherein the programs are stored in at least the provider shown in FIGS. Includes a program for outgoing call processing. RAM7 is SRA
M or a flash memory, etc., which is used as a working area of the main control unit 1 and stores temporary data generated when the program is executed. When a flash memory is used as the RAM 7, even if the power is cut off due to a power failure, a movement of the apparatus, or the like, the contents of the data are not lost. The image memory 8 is composed of a DRAM or the like, and stores image data to be transmitted or received image data. Note that the RAM 7 and the image memory 8 may be constituted by a hard disk memory.

The fax modem 10 is connected to a public telephone line L
And has the function of a fax modem for normal facsimile communication. An NCU (Network Control Unit) 11 is a hardware circuit that performs closing and opening operations such as a DC loop of an analog public telephone line L and has an automatic dial function. To the public telephone line L. The NCU 11 is connected to a predetermined terminal adapter and a DSU (subscriber line termination device: Digital Securities).
A connection may be made to a digital line (for example, an ISDN line) of a baseband transmission system via a rvice unit.

The facsimile apparatus 20 configured as described above has an Internet connection function and an e-mail function in addition to a normal facsimile communication function of the G3 system or the like. In the facsimile communication function, dot image data read by the image reading unit 2 is encoded by software in accordance with an encoding system such as MH, MR, MMR, etc. defined in the standard of facsimile communication, and then the other party's facsimile apparatus. On the other hand, the encoded data received from the other party's facsimile machine is also decoded into image data by software and output from the image recording unit 3 as a hard copy. The image memory 8 stores the image data as needed, and outputs the stored image data as needed.

Next, a case where image data is transmitted and received via the Internet will be described. Image data is transmitted using a Tagged Image File (TIFF), a common image format used by computers at the time of transmission.
Format) by software, and at the time of reception, it is converted from TIFF format to image data by software. The specifications of TIFF are published by Adobe Systems, Inc., and are not limited to black and white binary, but also correspond to respective classes (Cl
ass) is defined. C, one of them
LASS F defines facsimile image data in G3 format. Therefore, facsimile image data in the G3 format can be converted into the TIFF format by performing relatively easy processing such as adding CLASS F TIFF header information to the top of the data. Hereinafter, the image data to which the TIFF header information of the CLASS F is added is referred to as “TIFF image data”.

Since the TIFF image data thus obtained is binary data, it must be converted into text data by software at the time of transmission, and vice versa, ie, converted from text data to binary data at the time of reception. . This is because computers that cannot handle binary data e-mails are also connected to the Internet. For this reason, when transmitting binary data such as TIFF image data, the data is once converted into text data and transmitted to ensure that the electronic mail reaches the destination. The text data handled on the Internet is I
RFC (Request For Comments), a document issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (ETF)
822, it is defined as a 7-bit code.

Therefore, as an example, MIME (Multipurpo
When conversion to text data is performed using base64 which is one of the encoding types of se Internet Mail Extensions, the binary data is converted into 64 types of characters (upper and lower case alphabets, numbers, +, /) in 6-bit units. ) Is converted to text data. Note that MIME is defined in the aforementioned RFC.
"7bit", "8bit", "bi"
An encoding type such as “nary” is defined.

The MI to be transmitted obtained as described above
The text data file with the ME header is edited by the software in the form of an e-mail with the communication management information (mail header) added to the main body by the software. Is separated, and only the TIFF image data as the main body is extracted. Specifically, at the time of transmission, M
TIF converted to text data with IME header
A mail header and a MIME header as communication management information are added to the F image data and edited into an e-mail format. At the time of reception, the mail header is separated from the e-mail format data and converted into text data.
Only the F image data is extracted.

The mail editing process by such software is indispensable because it is necessary to add predetermined header information to the electronic mail on the Internet and to transmit it together with the text. Specifically, at the time of transmission, “Date:” (date and time of transmission of the electronic mail), “From:” (sender of the electronic mail),
“To:” (the destination of the e-mail), “Subject”
t: ”(additional information such as the title of the e-mail),“ C
c: "(the destination of the copy of the e-mail) and other header information, and these header information are separated at the time of reception.

FIG. 2 is a table showing an example of the contents of the provider telephone number table 7a stored in the RAM 7 of FIG. As shown in FIG. 2, the provider telephone number table 7a stores, for each connection priority, the telephone number of the access point of the Internet provider and the number of times connection has been impossible. When an e-mail is transmitted using the facsimile apparatus 20 of the present embodiment, the telephone number having the first connection priority has a dial error (for example, busy (busy), no answer, or wrong number). FIG. 3 shows an example of a mail transmission report in a case where a connection cannot be made due to the above reason, and a connection can be made with a telephone number having the second highest connection priority, and an electronic mail can be transmitted (OK). Also, an example of an e-mail transmission report in a case where three telephone numbers are dialed when an e-mail is transmitted using the facsimile apparatus 20 of the present embodiment, but none of the lines can be connected and a dial error occurs. As shown in FIG.

FIG. 5 and FIG. 6 are flowcharts showing the transmission processing to the provider executed by the main controller 1 of the facsimile machine 20 of FIG. Here, a case where an e-mail is transmitted via the Internet will be described. In FIG. 5, first, in step S1, it is determined whether or not an outgoing call instruction for transmitting an e-mail has been made using the operation unit 5, and the process waits until there is an outgoing call instruction. Selects the telephone number of the access point of the provider having the first connection priority in the provider telephone number table 7a in step S2. Next, in step S3, a call is made via the public telephone line L to the telephone number selected and read from the provider telephone number table 7a, and it is determined in step S4 whether or not the line connection has been successful. Proceeds to step S10, while if NO, proceeds to step S5.

In step S5, the number of times connection failure of the telephone number is disabled is incremented by one.
It is determined whether or not another telephone number is registered in the provider telephone number table 7a. If NO, redialing of the telephone number is performed in step S7.
It is determined whether or not it has been turned. Here, in step S6, Y
If NO in ES or step S7, step S7A
After storing the history of connection failure (that is, the history of which telephone number and why it is not connected) in the RAM 7, select the telephone number of the next priority in the provider telephone number table 7a, and go to step S3. Return. On the other hand, step S
If YES in step 7, a telephone number that is M or more times that connection is impossible is displayed on the display unit 4 in step S8, and a telephone number that is M or more times that connection is impossible is recorded on recording paper using the image recording unit 3, The process proceeds to step S14 in FIG.

In step S10, after clearing the applicable record of the number of times of connection failure to 0, the electronic mail transmission process is executed in step S11.
At 12, the telephone number of the connection success and the telephone number of M or more times that connection is impossible (here, M = 1 in the preferred embodiment) are displayed on the display unit 4, and
In step S13, for example, as shown in FIG.
The telephone number of the connection success and the telephone number of the connection impossible number M times or more are recorded on the recording paper using the image recording unit 3, and the process proceeds to step S14 in FIG.

In step S14 of FIG. 6, in the display state in step S12 or S8 described above, that is, in a state in which the telephone number of the connection success and / or the telephone number of the connection impossible number M or more are displayed on the display unit 4, The cursor is positioned at the position of the top telephone number (corresponding to, for example, the top position of the provider's telephone number in FIG. 3 or FIG. 4), and waits for key input of the operation unit 5;
In S16, S17, and S18, it is determined whether the delete key, the down cursor key, the end key, and the numeric key of the operation unit 5 are turned on. If the delete key is turned on (YES in step S15), the corresponding record of the cursor display on the display unit 4 is deleted from the provider telephone number table 7a in step S20, and the process returns to step S14. When the down cursor key is turned on (step S1)
(YES in 6), move the cursor to the telephone number of the next record in step S21, and return to step S14. When the end key is turned on (YES in step S17), the transmission process ends. Further, when the input is made using the numeric keypad (YES in step S18), step S19 is performed.
Then, the telephone number input using the numeric keypad is stored in the provider telephone number table 7a as the telephone number of the access point of the corresponding record in the cursor display, and the process proceeds to step S
Return to 14. That is, from step S14 to step S
Up to 18, the input unit 5 is in a key input waiting state.

In the flow of FIG. 5, step S
After the process of 7A, for example, a wait of 3 minutes may be inserted. Also, the provider telephone number table 7 in the RAM 7
The content of a, that is, data of the number of times of connection failure for each telephone number, or the history of connection failure stored in step S7A may be displayed on the display unit 4 or recorded using the image recording unit 3. .

As described above, according to the present embodiment, in addition to the conventional facsimile communication function such as the G3 system, the Internet communication function is provided, and the provider telephone number table 7a in the RAM 7 stores a plurality of provider telephone numbers. When a telephone number is stored and a plurality of telephone numbers are automatically dialed using the NCU 11 via the public telephone line L and connection is not possible, the telephone number that could not be connected is displayed on the display unit 4.
Is displayed on the recording paper using the image recording unit 3, so that the operator can grasp the reason for the failure in connection with the provider, for example, to easily detect an error in the telephone number. I can judge.

When a plurality of telephone numbers are dialed using the NCU 11 and one of the telephone numbers can be connected, the connected telephone number and the unconnected telephone number are displayed on the display unit 4 and image recording is performed. The recording is performed on recording paper using the unit 3. Therefore, even if a line connection is established, the other telephone numbers that could not be connected are displayed, so that the line connection status with the provider can be grasped in detail.For example, unnecessary telephone numbers can be deleted or The telephone number changed or changed can be corrected, so that it does not take much time to connect the line for the next communication.

Further, at least one of the plurality of telephone numbers in the provider telephone number table 7a can be deleted or corrected using the operation unit 5 in the above display state, so that an incorrect telephone number is displayed. , The telephone number can be immediately corrected or deleted, so that there is no need to perform the number input operation from the beginning. Therefore, operability can be improved as compared with the prior art device.

<Modification> In the above embodiment, an example of the facsimile apparatus 20 has been described. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and is connected to a public network such as a public telephone network or a public digital network. For example, the present invention can be applied to a communication terminal device including a telephone, a data communication device, and the like.

[0032]

As described in detail above, according to the communication terminal device of the first aspect of the present invention, a storage means for storing a plurality of telephone numbers of a communication connection company, and a communication line for the plurality of telephone numbers. Automatic dialing means for automatically dialing through a plurality of telephone numbers, and a notifying means for notifying a telephone number which could not be connected when a connection cannot be made as a result of dialing a plurality of telephone numbers by the automatic dialing means. Therefore, when a connection cannot be established with the communication connection provider, the reason can be grasped by the operator, and for example, an error in the telephone number can be easily determined.

[0033] According to the communication terminal device of the second aspect, in the communication terminal device of the first aspect, the notifying means is configured to dial any one of a plurality of telephone numbers by the automatic dialing means. If the connection can be established, the connected telephone number and the unconnected telephone number are notified. Therefore, even if a line connection is made, other telephone numbers that could not be connected are displayed, so that the line connection status with a communication connection company can be grasped in detail, for example, unnecessary telephone numbers are deleted, Alternatively, an incorrect or changed telephone number can be corrected, so that it does not take much time to connect the line for the next communication.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the communication terminal device according to the first or second aspect, when the notifying unit notifies the telephone number, a plurality of telephones stored in the storage unit are provided. Operation means for deleting or correcting at least one of the numbers is further provided. Therefore,
Since the wrong telephone number is displayed and can be immediately corrected or deleted, it is not necessary to perform the number input operation from the beginning. Therefore, operability can be improved as compared with the prior art device.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a facsimile apparatus with an Internet connection function 20 according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a table showing an example of contents of a provider telephone number table 7a stored in a RAM 7 of FIG.

FIG. 3 is an image recording unit 3 of the facsimile machine 20 of FIG.
FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of a mail transmission report printed out by the MFP.

4 is an image recording unit 3 of the facsimile machine 20 of FIG.
FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of a mail transmission report printed out by the MFP.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a first part of a transmission process to a provider executed by the main control unit 1 of the facsimile machine 20 of FIG.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing a second part of the process of transmitting to the provider executed by the main control unit 1 of the facsimile machine 20 of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Main control part, 3 ... Image recording part, 4 ... Display part, 5 ... Operation part, 6 ... ROM, 7 ... RAM, 7a ... Provider telephone number table, 10 ... Fax modem, 11 ... NCU, 20 ... Facsimile machine L: Public telephone line.

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on front page F term (reference) 5C062 AA02 AA29 AB20 AB23 AB38 AB42 AB53 AC22 AC35 AF03 AF15 BA04 BD09 5C075 AB90 BA03 BA13 CE01 CE14 5K036 AA13 AA15 BB01 BB11 DD04 DD11 DD32 JJ03 JJ12 5K101 NN01 PP03 PP09 QQ07 RR16 TT06

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A storage means for storing a plurality of telephone numbers of a communication connection company; an automatic dial means for automatically dialing said plurality of telephone numbers via a communication line; and a plurality of telephone numbers by said automatic dial means. And a notifying unit for notifying a telephone number that could not be connected when dialing is not possible as a result of dialing. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the notifying unit is configured to dial one of a plurality of telephone numbers by the automatic dialing unit.
2. The system according to claim 1, wherein when a connection can be established, a telephone number that can be connected and a telephone number that cannot be connected are notified.
The communication terminal device according to claim 1. 3. An operation means for deleting or correcting at least one of the plurality of telephone numbers stored in the storage means when the notification means notifies the telephone number. The communication terminal device according to claim 1.