Patent ID: 7151753

Claim:
A method in an Internet Protocol (IP) telecommunications network of establishing a conference call between a first user as a conference owner and a plurality of other users as conference participants, said network including a conference server and at least one Serving Call State Control Function (S-CSCF) providing call control functions for the users, said method comprising: registering with a first S-CSCF serving the first user, the first user as the conference owner; identifying the conference participants to the first S-CSCF; identifying by the first S-CSCF, each participant's assigned S-CSCF; sending a request from the first S-CSCF to each participant's S-CSCF requesting each S-CSCF to notify the first S-CSCF when a predefined criterion for initiating the conference call has been met by the participant being served by the participant's S-CSCF; detecting by each participant's S-CSCF, when each participant has met the predefined criterion; sending a notification from each participant's S-CSCF to the first S-CSCF when each participant being served by the participant's S-CSCF has met the predefined criterion; determining by the first S-CSCF whether the participants have met the predefined criterion for initiating the conference call; instructing the conference server to initiate the conference call upon determining that the participants have met the predefined criterion; receiving by the conference server, a message from one of the users; determining by the conference server, whether the message is from the owner or one of the other participants; forwarding the message from the conference server to all of the participants, upon determining that the message is from the owner; and forwarding the message from the conference server to the owner only, upon determining that the message is from one of the other participants.