Method and System for Storing and Communicating a Phone Call Receiver’s Status Information to a Phone Call Initiator (02-Feb-2010)

Method and System for Storing and Communicating a Phone Call Receiver's Status

Information to a Phone Call Initiator

Disclosed is a method and system for storing and communicating status information of a phone call receiver to a phone call initiator.

In a typical mobile phone, a user chooses a user profile that reflects user's status. The user

profile may be "In a Meeting", "Busy outdoor", "On Roaming", "Phone off" or "Switched Off"

and "Do Not Disturb", etc. Unlike in other methods, where a call is established between a phone call initiator and the user i.e. a phone call receiver, irrespective of the user profile chosen by the

phone call receiver, the present method presents the phone call receiver's status to the phone call

initiator prior to establishing the call. Therefore, the disclosed method and system allows the

                                                  . For example, a phone call receiver may choose a user profile "Do Not Disturb" when the phone call receiver does not wish to receive any calls. When a phone call initiator attempts to call the

phone call receiver, the phone call receiver's status, i.e. "Do Not Disturb", is presented to the

phone call initiator. Thereafter, the phone call initiator may choose whether to proceed with the

call or not.

Fig. 1 depicts a flowchart illustrating the steps involved in updating information associated with a user profile in a Home Location Register (HLR) of a Main Switching Centre (MSC). The user

profile reflects the phone call receiver's status in a mobile phone. The phone call receiver's

status in the HLR is updated when a phone call receiver changes the status. The status information is initially stored in the Random Access Memory (RAM) of a phone call receiver's SIM prior to updating the HLR of the MSC. Thereafter, a User Profile Managing Utility inserts the status information in the HLR. The status information may be stored in the HLR over a SS7

protocol. The status information is stored in the HLR as a character string and a Boolean

variable. The status information may be inserted in the HLR along with other user information such as, location information, services subscribed, etc. Thereafter, the User Profile Managing Utility updates the status information in the MSC.

phone call initiator to proceed with the call based on the phone call initiator's discretion

1

Figure 1

Furthermore, the status information is updated in the HLR of the phone call receiver when a mobile phone is "switched off" or "switched on". Fig. 2 depicts a flowchart illustrating the steps involved in updating status information in a HLR of a phone call receiver when a mobile phone is "switched off" or "switched on". When the status information is indicated as "switched off", the status information is communicated to a phone call initiator before a call is established between the phone call initiator and t...