Patent ID: 8000693

Claim:
A method for providing access to information about local services offered by a facility, the method comprising the steps of: sending a client-based facility-mode program and a profile for the facility for loading in a memory associated with a user's portable device, wherein the profile includes a description of the local services offered by the facility, the services having respective telephones connected via a local area network of the facility to a wide area telephone network, wherein the telephones for the services have respective shortcut telephone numbers by which the telephones are accessible within the local area network and have longer telephone numbers by which the telephones are accessible within the wide area network and wherein the profile includes the longer telephone numbers and the shortcut numbers for the services, and wherein the facility-mode program enables the portable device to operate in a facility mode for displaying the descriptions of the services from the profile so that the user can select a service from among the displayed services, and to operate in local and normal sub-modes of the facility mode, wherein responsive to the user's service selection in the normal sub-mode of operation the user's portable device places a call to the selected service via the wide area network using the longer telephone number and in the local sub-mode of operation the user's portable device places the call to the selected service via the local area network using the shortcut number; and routing the call over the local network to the service telephone of the selected service in response to receiving a telephone number for the service from the user's portable device, wherein the telephone number includes the shortcut number received via a close-range, standard-protocol radio signal if the user's device places the call in the local sub-mode and the telephone number includes the longer number received via the wide area network if the user's device places the call in the normal sub-mode.