True number portability and advanced call screening in a SIP-based IP telephony system

Custom local area signaling service features offered in the PSTN have certain limitations due to the closed nature of PSTN network signaling. The adoption of telephony over IP (IP telephony) will enable a new paradigm of services and features that are not possible to implement in today's PSTN. This is especially the case for services that make use of personal, trusted information, which can be provided by a user's personal digital assistant. We demonstrate how personal information can be coupled with an IP telephony service to provide user-customized call handling by the network. In particular, we describe a demonstration architecture that includes Ethernet-attached phones running SIP, with an interface to synchronize with PDAs that supply personal information. The proposed architecture is quite flexible; it can support enhanced versions of the current PSTN and private branch exchange services, in addition to many new features and services. We describe true number portability and advanced call screening as examples of new services in a hybrid PSTN/IP telephony environment.