Patent ID: RE43361

Claim:
An apparatus for decentralizing communication services in a telecommunications system, comprising: a switch fabric which provides bearer functions; a switch intelligence which provides control functions for said a switch fabric, said switch intelligence being logically separated from said switch fabric and being implemented in a separate network element from said switch fabric, the switch intelligence being configured to: process information received from the switch fabric, the information comprising a facility related event associated with a call, maintain a call state associated with completing the call in accordance with a call model, the call model indicating how the information will be processed, identify at least one point in call associated with completing the call, and forward a request for a telecommunications function in response to the identified at least one point in call; a switch fabric proxy service for providing a normalized interface between said switch fabric and said switch intelligence for all communications involving said switch fabric by interfacing to said switch fabric with any one of a plurality of application program interfaces and interfacing to said switch intelligence with a uniform application program interface , wherein the normalized interface comprises any one of a plurality of vendor-specific interfaces associated with the switch fabric ; and a feature processor, said feature processor configured to: receive the request for the telecommunications function, and executing at least one execute the telecommunications function , for interacting with said switch intelligence to thereby provide said telecommunications feature in response to the received request .