METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING USER STATUS INFORMATION WHEN IN A TELEPHONE CONFERENCE

摘要

A method for a conference bridge including the following steps: a) establishing status information in particular for indicating whether a user is on hold or not for a conference call and storing the status information in a storage device (102), the status information for maintaining a participant status for user devices; b) setting the status information to indicate user devices participating in the conference call are connected (104); c) transmitting a unique identifier to each user device via an in-band signal (106); d) receiving a line-on-hold signal and the corresponding unique identifier from at least one user device, the line-on-hold signal being an in-band signal (108); and e) updating the status information in response each line-on-hold signal received to indicate the corresponding user device has placed the conference call on hold (110). An apparatus for may include a storage device for storing the status information, a processor, a transmitting device for transmitting the unique identifier, and a receiving device for receiving the line-on-hold signal.