IMPROVED FEATURES FOR A TELECOMMUNICATIONS DISPLAY SYSTEM

摘要

A telecommunications system for communicating voice and data sequentially via a public telephone system (50) between a subscriber's position (10) and an agent's position (60), which could alternatively be between peers at those stations, includes a telephone (12, 62) at each station (10, 60) for voice communications and at least a data transmission component (64, 100) at the agent's station (60) and a data reception and display terminal (14) at the subscriber's station (60). The subscriber's terminal (14) has switching features (33, 320, 323, 334) to switch between voice mode and data mode, which switching features are controllable by the agent's terminal (100). The agent's terminal can also mark data transmitted with different levels of protection and handling by the subscriber's terminal (14), including temporary messages, normal messages, and billboard messages. A new operating system for the subscriber's terminal (14) can also be transmitted from the agent's terminal (100). Autoanswer features at the subscriber's station (10) include data only or data and voice reception. Memory in the subscriber's terminal (14) and the agent's terminal (100) have battery back-up.