Patent ID: 8379825

Claim:
A method of establishing a call over a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), comprising: receiving a message from a calling party at a network element of a PSTN requesting establishment of the call over the PSTN using a callback feature, the calling party associated with a calling party's consumer premises equipment (CPE) served by a first end office (EO) associated with the PSTN, said message being received via an internet protocol (IP) network and including identifying information for the calling party's CPE; notifying the first EO of the request for establishment of the call using the callback feature; determining at least one of trunk and switch resources are available for the call at the first EO; originating the call from the PSTN such that the first EO at least initially treats establishment of the call like a call terminating at the calling party's CPE as opposed to a call originating from the calling party's CPE; applying an alerting signal to the calling party's CPE; and establishing the call from the calling party's CPE to a called party's CPE after the calling party's CPE is answered in response to the alerting signal; wherein the call originated from the PSTN is given a higher priority than other line originating call attempts to the first EO that wait for a dial tone and require digit collection.