US Patent 7117152 System and method for speech recognition assisted voice communications

A communication system includes communications equipment having a voice input device, an acoustic output device, and a visual display device. The communications equipment receives voice information from a user using the voice input device, converts the voice information into text, and communicates packets encoding the voice information and the text to a remote location. The communications equipment also receives packets encoding voice and text information from the remote location, outputs the voice information using the acoustic output device, and outputs the text information using the visual display device.