Patent ID: 7116976

Claim:
A method for facilitating a called party in responding to a calling party, said method comprises: (a) receiving an incoming voice call from the calling party at a mobile communication device of the called party; (b) determining that the called party declines to answer the incoming voice call from the calling party; (c) determining a set of predetermined messages; (d) presenting the predetermined messages to the called party; (e) receiving a user selection of one of the predetermined messages from the called party; and (f) providing the selected one of the predetermined messages to the calling party, wherein the predetermined messages are text messages, and wherein said providing (f) includes at least (f1) answering the incoming voice call to enable a voice channel: (f2) informing the calling party to expect a text message via the voice channel: (f3) closing the incoming voice call to disable the voice channel: and (f4) transmitting the selected one of the predetermined messages to the calling party as a text message.