Patent ID: 6907112

Claim:
A communication system comprising: a telephone network including a multiplicity of telephones interconnected by telephone network interconnections; a computer network having a multiplicity of nodes and enabling non-streaming Internet protocol communication between said nodes, the computer network enabling e-mail communication between said nodes; streaming audio link communication apparatus communicating to the telephone network a link to streaming audio via said non-streaming Internet protocol communication; a streaming audio player operative to play said streaming audio from said computer network over at least a portion of said telephone network interconnections; and a multiplicity of voice response computers, each voice response computer being connected to a node of said computer network and being actuated by an input received from one of said multiplicity of telephones via said telephone network for communicating voice received via said one of said multiplicity of telephones via a non-streaming Internet protocol over said computer network, wherein the system also provides Instant Messaging protocol functionality whereby communications are sent to user-selected destinations via said computer network.