Patent ID: 6735208
Filing Date: 2004-05-11
Classification: H04J,H04L,H04M,H04Q

Abstract:
A private branch exchange (PBX) for servicing telephone calls between internal telephones and providing outside lines to the public telephone system for said internal telephones, the PBX comprising:a computer data network having quality of service (QoS) including a server, client workstations, network cabling and a network operating system that enables data exchange between said server and said client workstations; an interface to the public telephone system that converts voice, modem and tone transmissions from the public telephone system to asynchronous data transmissions and vice versa, wherein said interface is coupled to said computer data network; a plurality of internal telephones each of which is connected to said network cabling by means of a station interface and each of which is associated with a separate one of said client workstations; call control programming installed on said computer data network that manages transmission of data over said network cabling between pairs of said plurality of internal telephones and manages transmission over said network cabling of data between each of said plurality of telephones and the interface to the public telephone network; and wherein said call control programming further provides a graphical user interface on each of said client workstations to which one of said plurality of telephones is associated, wherein said graphical user interface provides for at least one of answering and initiating telephone calls on the one of the plurality of telephones with which said client workstation is associated by operating a mouse or equivalent pointing device in conjunction with said graphical user interface.