摘要 |
An advertising method by using a ring-back tone is provided. A controller employed in a sender-side switching system recognizes a sender's telephone number and a receiver's telephone number dialed at the sender's telephone set. Then the receiver's telephone number is transmitted to a receiver-side switching system at a calling stage. The receiver-side switching system checks the state of the receiver's telephone, e.g., ready or busy, and, subsequently, send, e.g., a ring-back tone in conformity to the state to the sender-side switching system. The sender-side switching system receives the ring-back tone. In case the ring-back tone is a busy tone, the sender-side switching system forwards the busy tone to the sender's telephone set. Otherwise, that is, the ring-back tone is a ringing tone which implies that the receiver's telephone is ready to receive a call, the sender-side switching system searches registered member information by consulting a database linked to the controller and checks if the receiver's telephone number matches a registered member in the database. If the sender is determined not to be a registered member, the sender-side switching system forwards the ring-back tone; otherwise, it sends a predetermined advertisement message stored in an advertisement memory to the sender's telephone set. If a response, e.g., a hook-off, from the receiver's telephone is perceived or if the sender terminates the call, the sender-side switching system stops the sending of the advertisement message.
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