Patent ID: 7929941

Claim:
An Emergency Voice Mail System connected to the telephone network for providing emergency voice mail service to a plurality of telephone customers whose serving local exchange is suffering a service outage, comprising: emergency customer mail box for storing voice messages for a plurality of telephone customers: emergency voice mail controller, resident in the telephone network and responsive to a local exchange suffering a service outage, for activating emergency voice mail service, comprising: service outage database for identifying a plurality of telephone customers served by said local exchange which is suffering a service outage, announcement system, responsive to a calling party dialing a telephone number of one of said identified telephone customers, for providing said calling party with a recorded announcement identifying the existence of said service outage, call redirection system for enabling said calling party to manually select one of: automatic redirection of their call to said emergency customer mail box and manually dialing a telephone number of said emergency customer mail box; and wherein said emergency customer mail box comprises: mail box interface, responsive to said calling party accessing said emergency customer mail box and redialing the telephone number of said identified telephone customer, for enabling said calling party to record a message for said identified telephone customer.