Patent ID: 8059564

Claim:
A method for providing terminal codec setup for use in a multimedia Ring Back Tone (RBT) service, wherein the RBT service allows an RBT sound source previously set in a sound source-providing server by a called subscriber to be reproduced to a caller-side terminal, by using a Home Location Register (HLR) and the sound source-providing server for storing RBT sound sources when a calling subscriber places a call to the called subscriber, the HLR storing profile information including whether the subscriber has is subscribed to the RBT service, the method comprising the steps of: (a) receiving a first codec setup message including multimedia codec information from a called subscriber-side communication network after a call connection request message including the multimedia codec information is transmitted to the called subscriber-side communication network; (b) when the first codec setup message is received, transmitting a second codec setup message for requesting setup of a multimedia codec to a caller-side Base Transceiver Station (BTS), to thereby control a caller-side vocoder installed in a caller-side Base Station Controller (BSC) to set up the multimedia codec by using the multimedia codec information included in the second codec setup message; (c) when the first codec setup message is received, transmitting a third codec setup message for requesting setup of the multimedia codec to the caller-side terminal, to thereby control the caller-side terminal to set up the multimedia codec by using the multimedia codec information included in the third codec setup message; and (d) receiving the RBT sound source selected by using the multimedia codec information from the sound source providing server and transmitting the RBT sound source to the caller-side terminal wherein the multimedia codec is different from a voice codec.