Patent 7554968 was granted and assigned to AT&T Intellectual Property I on June, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention integrates Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) and computer network technologies to provide telephone services. The system of the present invention comprises a gateway serving as an interface between a service control point (SCP) of an AIN and a computer network. The computer network is preferably the Internet. The SCP obtains call routing instructions from the subscriber of the present invention through a link during a communication session between the subscriber and the computer network. A trigger is provisioned on a subscriber's line. When a call for a telephone line having the provisioned trigger is detected at a service switching point (SSP), a query is launched to the SCP. A call processing request query comprising calling party information is provided to the gateway. The gateway obtains a response from the computer network containing call processing instructions. The call is processed in accordance with the response.