Patent ID: 6937699

Claim:
A system for providing advertising on a data network telephony system comprising: a data network to provide data connectivity for a plurality of data communications channels using data transport protocols; a commercial message server being operable to download at least one commercial message; a first and second data network telephone connected to the data network, each data network telephone operable to communicate voice signals as data packets on a voice over data channel, the voice over data channel being one of the plurality of data communications channels on the data network containing packetized voice signals, the data network telephones identified by a first and second user identifier corresponding to the data network telephones; a network telephony connection server being operable to provide telephony service to the data network telephones and communicate at least one commercial message request with the commercial message server; and the first data network telephone being operable to receive the downloaded commercial messages before the first and second data network telephones communicate voice signals on the voice over data channel, the first data network telephone further comprising a message display device to display the commercial messages; wherein each user identifier includes a unique sequence of alphanumeric elements; and wherein the first data network telephone further comprises at least one speed dial operable to initiate a second voice data channel to a called party at a selected voice communications device when the speed dial key is assigned to the called party's user identifier.