Patent ID: 7400712

Claim:
A method for permitting a subscriber to perform an action available on a communications network using a spoken utterance, comprising: maintaining a system state database comprising a tree structure having a plurality of nodes, each respective node of said plurality of nodes representing a particular system state of a plurality of possible system states, each state comprising a plurality of possible steps in a call flow, including an always connected state in which a feature may be accessed even when a call is not in progress and being associated with a predetermined node-specific, speech-based grammar for the respective node; awaiting from the subscriber a spoken utterance at the particular system state; recognizing the spoken utterance by comparing the spoken utterance to the predetermined grammar for the respective node for correspondence to the particular system state; and performing an action at the network represented by the spoken utterance when the spoken utterance has been recognized as the predetermined grammar for the respective node, wherein the action activates a control sequence at the network for accessing a feature available on the network, including always-on connected features.