Patent ID: 8611519

Claim:
A method of providing a call handling service to a user, the method comprising: accessing a call handling profile, the calling handling profile indicative of: priority level associations between calling party phone numbers and a set of priority levels; and call handling rules including a plurality of priority rules matrices, wherein each priority rule matrix: is associated with a corresponding customer premise device; and indicates call handling priority for the corresponding customer premise device based on priority levels associated with calling party phone numbers; and responsive to receiving, while an initial call from a first calling party phone number associated with a first priority level is in progress, a subsequent call from a second calling party phone number: identifying, from the priority level associations in the call handling profile and the second calling party phone number, a second priority level, wherein the second priority level is a priority level associated with the second calling party phone number; selecting a priority rules matrix associated with a most recently used customer premises device; identifying, from the priority rules matrix associated with the most recently used customer premises device, a selected call handling rule based on the first priority level and the second priority level; and processing the subsequent call according to the selected call handing rule, wherein the selected call handling rule routes the subsequent call to a voice mail application without notifying a recipient of the subsequent call.