Patent ID: 7130397

Claim:
In a telecommunications network having network elements and through which call connections are formed between calling stations and called stations to permit telephonic communications to be effectuated, an improvement of apparatus for facilitating amelioration of network congestion caused by a mass call event in which a plurality of call connections are requested to be made to a selected set of called stations within a selected time period, said apparatus comprising: a mass call event detector adapted automatically to receive indications of selected attempts to form call connections between selected calling stations and selected called stations during operation of the telecommunication network, said mass call event detector for detecting occurrence of the mass call event responsive to the indications of the selected attempts; and a notifier coupled to said mass call event detector to receive indications of detection of occurrence of the mass call event, said notifier for notifying the network elements of the mass call event, automatically and free of manual interaction; wherein the mass call event detector and the notifier are a nominated one of a plurality of mass call event detectors and notifiers, and wherein the one nominated mass call event detector detects the occurrence of the mass call event and the one nominated notifier provides a notification of the occurrence received by each of the network elements.