Patent ID: 7058401

Claim:
A telephone system for a vehicle comprising: a vehicle transceiver, on board said vehicle, and connectable to a cellular telephone network for bi-directional communication therewith; a server terminal, on board said vehicle, connected to said transceiver and having an identification address; a plurality of user terminals, distributed on board the vehicle, each capable of accepting an identity of a user of the cellular telephone system and each connected to said server terminal whereby a plurality of users may communicate simultaneously with said network via the server terminal; a location data base for identifying users of the cellular telephone system when their identifies are accepted by respective user terminals and for associating those users with said identification address to permit communication to be established between those users and the cellular telephone system via the server terminal; a plurality of interface systems each for providing a communication path between said transceiver and a switching network within a respective region, the switching network being connected to said telephone network and connectable to at least one of said interface systems when the vehicle is located in the region corresponding to that interface system thereby providing a communication path between said transceiver and said telephone network; and control apparatus operable to select which one of said interface systems should provide the communication path to the transceiver when the vehicle is located in the regions corresponding to a plurality of interface systems, the control apparatus being further operable to control simultaneously the handover of said established communication when the vehicle moves from a first one of the said regions to a second one of said regions, wherein said identification address remains unaltered as said vehicle moves from said first to said second respective regions.