Patent ID: 8599724

Claim:
A decentralized public address paging system including: a combined data and digital audio network; a plurality of public address paging system consoles, each including an operator interface to select one or more paging destinations and arranged to transmit data packets including paging destination data across said network; and a number of public address addressable amplifier modules in communication with said network and responsive to the data packets, each of said amplifier modules having an associated address and is arranged to operate according to whether paging destination data contained within the data packets relates to said associated address characterized in that each paging system console is configured to listen to page control data packets received from other paging devices on the network to generate an engaged paging destination set and resolve the simultaneous transmission of data packets to the same paging destination using priority whereby paging system consoles transmitting lower priority data packets locally store the packets for later forwarding; and wherein the engaged paging destination set is a set of destination zones for currently active paging events.