Patent ID: 8175081

Claim:
A method for playing an announcement to a calling party, the method comprising: receiving an incoming call from the calling party; determining an identification of the calling party; specifying one of a plurality of differing announcements as the announcement to the calling party in accordance with the identification of the calling party upon receipt of the incoming call, wherein the announcement is a calling party specific announcement intended for the calling party; determining with a service control point how to handle the incoming call, including determining with information from a gateway system whether a user is connected to a packet-based data network; providing instructions from the service control point to supply a busy signal to the calling party if the user is not connected to the packet-based data network; otherwise, forwarding the incoming call to the gateway system if the user is connected to the packet-based data network; and prompting the user to choose a call handling option if the user is connected to the packet-based data network, wherein the prompting allows rerouting the incoming call to an alternate communication line that differs from a communication line of the incoming call, and also allows a one-way voice connection to be established to allow a called party to listen to the calling party contemporaneous with the calling party leaving a message and while the called party maintains a connection with the packet-based data network, without answering the incoming call.