METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PLAYING PACKETIZED ANNOUNCEMENTS TO TELEPHONE NETWORK END OFFICE SWITCHING SYSTEMS FROM A CENTRALIZED DIGITAL RECORDED ANNOUNCEMENT UNIT

摘要

A centralized recorded announcement unit (120) shared by multiple end offices (130, 150, 170) on a public switched telephone network stores announcements in digital files. When a call is received at a switch (125) and an announcement is required, the announcement is played to the caller by an announcement device (140, 160, 180) if the particular announcement file is stored locally. If the announcement is not stored locally, a request is sent to the centralized recorded announcement unit (120) to retrieve the announcement file and play the announcement to the caller. Both the request and the announcement file are sent via a packed-switched network (128).