Patent ID: 8798603

Claim:
A method for forwarding a telephone call, said method comprising: routing a telephone call from a calling party to a first telephone of a called party; in response to determining that the telephone call was not answered by the called party and that an emergency code was received with the telephone call, determining that the telephone call is to be forwarded to another telephone within a predetermined distance of the first telephone of the called party, the another telephone being unrelated to either the calling party or the called party; determining geographic coordinates of the first telephone; determining geographic coordinates of at least one unrelated second telephone; determining whether the at least one unrelated second telephone is within the predetermined distance of the first telephone; selecting an unrelated second telephone determined to be within the predetermined distance of the first telephone; playing a message to a first user of the unrelated second telephone to notify the first user that the telephone call for the called party within the predetermined range of the first user is being re-routed to the second telephone because the telephone call to the first telephone was not answered; enabling the first user to accept or reject the telephone call; in response to the first user accepting the telephone call, forwarding the telephone call to the unrelated second telephone, without routing through the first telephone; and in response to the first user rejecting the telephone call, selecting an unrelated third telephone determined to be within the predetermined distance of the first telephone; playing a message to a second user of the unrelated third telephone to notify the second user that the telephone call for the called party within the predetermined range of the second user is being re-routed to the third telephone because the telephone call to the first telephone was not answered; enabling the second user to accept or reject the telephone call; and in response to the second user accepting the telephone call, forwarding the telephone call to the unrelated third telephone, without routing through the first telephone.