Patent ID: 7773974

Claim:
A method for servicing a call from a calling party to a cellular telephone corresponding to a called party, the method comprising: operating a device in a communications network to detect a call to said cellular telephone; operating said device to determine from stored telephone status information the status of said cellular telephone, wherein at least a portion of said stored information other than the registration was stored prior to detecting the call; when the call is not successfully completed to the called party, operating said device to communicate called party state information to the calling party; operating said device to store telephone state information corresponding to the called party's cellular phone based on a registration signal automatically sent to a base station from the called party's cellular phone upon the called party's cellular phone being powered on; and operating said device to forward the detected call to voice mail when said telephone state information indicates that the called cellular telephone is registered but is not reachable for an extended period of time, said extended period of time being at least 10 minutes.