Patent ID: 7266382

Claim:
In a telecommunications system using half-duplex communications and a push-to-talk feature, where communications channel resources are not always dedicated for a push-to-talk call, a method for buffering the initial speech of an initial speaker in a push-to-talk call, the method comprising the steps of: determining at least one participant or group to call; receiving a call request from the initial speaker to the at least one participant or group; determining when one of the at least one participant or group is registered with the telecommunications system; when one of the at least one participant or group is determined to be registered with the telecommunications system, then notifying the initial speaker to begin speaking prior to all called parties being connected to the call and prior to requesting a called party to come out of a dormancy state; receiving and digitizing voice packets from the initial speaker; storing the digitized data packets in a storage medium; and transmitting the digitized voice packets when a predetermined packet transmission triggering event occurs.