Patent ID: 6914897

Claim:
A system for accessing radio programming in a data network telephony system comprising: a data network to provide data connectivity for a plurality of data communications channels using data transport protocols; a radio server connected to the data network, the radio server operable to communicate an audio signal as radio-over-data packets on a radio-over-data channel, the radio-over-data channel being one of the plurality of data communications channels; a data network telephone connected to the data network, the data network telephone operable to communicate a voice signal as voice-over-data packets on a voice-over-data channel, the voice over data channel being one of the plurality of data communications channels, the data network telephone operable to convert voice-over-data packets communicated on the voice-over-data channel to voice signals, the data network telephone operable to communicate with the radio server via the radio-over-data channel, the data network telephone further comprising an audio output; a radio application in the data network telephone operable to receive the audio signals in the radio-over-data channel and to couple the audio signals to the audio output; a portable information device comprising a graphical user interface and a data network telephone interface, the graphical user interface operable to accept and display information from the Internet service, the data network telephone interface operable to communicate at least one request for data network services with the data network telephone; and a radio control application executing in the portable information device, the radio control application operable to communicate a radio station selection via the data network telephone interface, the radio station selection being one of the requests for data network services having a data network identifier corresponding to a selected radio station, wherein the data network telephone communicates the radio station selection to the radio server to use the radio station selection to access the selected radio station; wherein: the data network telephone includes a portable information device interface to communicate with the data network telephone interface on the portable information device; and the data network telephone interface comprises: a link interface circuit having a transmitter and receiver to communicate PID data between the portable information device and the data network telephone; a data link controller to process the PID data in accordance with a communications specification; and the link interface circuit includes an infrared transmitter and receiver to communicate the PID data; and wherein: the communications specification includes a specification selected from the group comprising: the Infrared Data Association and the Point-To-Point Protocol.