VIRTUAL AREA BASED TELEPHONY COMMUNICATIONS

摘要

A persistent virtual area (36) that supports establishment of respective presences of communicants operating respective network nodes connected to the virtual area (36) even after all network nodes have disconnected from the virtual area (36) is maintained. A presence in the virtual area (36) is established for a user of a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) terminal device (16). Transmission of data associated with the virtual area (36) to the PSTN terminal device (16).