| 摘要 |
Methods and apparatus for increasing the utility and interoperability of peripheral devices such as, voice mail devices and voice dialing platforms, used in communications systems are described. Methods of efficiently providing speech recognition functionality to multiple subscribes through the use of centralized speech recognition circuits are also described. One feature of the invention is directed to dynamically enabling/disabling an automatic connection feature whereby a central office switch connects a subscriber to an intelligent peripheral device in response to an off-hook condition. In one embodiment the C.O. switch's automatic peripheral device connection feature is only enabled when a voice mail IP has a waiting message thereby reducing or eliminating unnecessary connections to the voice mail IP. In order to support automatic connection to multiple IPs in response to an off-hook condition, in one embodiment a caller is connected to a control IP in response to an off-hook condition. The control IP then automatically connects the caller to one or more IPs as appropriate. In this manner a subscriber can access, e.g., sequentially, multiple IPs without having to dial the IPs or take other steps to affirmatively connect to the IPs. In one particular embodiment, speech recognition circuitry included in a control IP is used to provide speech recognition functionality when interacting with various IPs to which the subscriber was connected under control of the control IP. Thus the benefits of speech recognition capability can be provided to multiple IPs without the need for each individual IP to implement speech recognition functionality.
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