JPH01300754A - Conference telephone terminal equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To constitute the title equipment so that plural internal conference participants who have assembled in a meeting place can exchange freely an optinion with plural external conference participants by supplying a voice of the external conference participant to a mixing means and uttering it as a voice to the internal conference participant. CONSTITUTION:When a calling signal arrives through one of subscriber lines L1-Ln, call holding circuits H1-Hn establish firmly a speech path and hold successively the subscriber lines concerned L1-Ln, and set them to a callable state. An automatic incoming operation of such call holding circuits H1-Hn is executed only in case when a changeover switch of a conference equipment-telephone set switching circuit 4 has been set to the conference equipment side. A transmission/reception signal which has been mixed by a mixing circuit 5 is supplied to a converting circuit 7 through a switching circuit 6 and the receiving signal is amplified, and a loudspeaker 12 is driven. In this way, plural internal conference participants who have assembled in a meeting place can exchange freely an opinion with plural external conference participants through a telephone network.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] "Industrial Application Field" This invention provides a system for connecting a plurality of internal conference participants gathered in a specific venue and a plurality of external conference participants outside the venue via a telephone line network. The present invention relates to a conference telephone terminal device that allows a conference to be held while freely exchanging opinions.

"Prior Art" Conventionally, attempts have been made to hold a conference using a conference telephone terminal device that can be connected to a plurality of telephones via a telephone line network. In this case, by installing one terminal device at the head office, for example, it becomes possible to communicate with telephones at N branch offices, allowing one person at the head office and N external conference participants at each branch A meeting can be held with a total of N+1 people.

``Problems to be Solved by the Invention'' By the way, conventional conference telephone terminal devices are only equipped with a - pair of handsets, and the number of people who can talk on the terminal device side is limited to one person. Therefore, for example, even if multiple internal conference participants gather at the head office where this terminal device is installed, only one of these internal conference participants will be able to have a conversation with the external conference participants. Others were not able to directly exchange opinions other than listening to the calls through monitor speakers.

This invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and allows not only multiple external conference participants outside a specific venue, but also multiple internal conference participants gathered within a specific venue to be contacted by telephone. The purpose of the present invention is to provide a conference telephone terminal device that allows users to freely participate in a conference via a line.

"Means for Solving the Problem" The present invention provides communication between telephones owned by a plurality of external conference participants outside a specific venue in response to calling signals supplied from the telephones owned by the participants via a telephone line network. call holding means for establishing communication paths between the parties; a transmitting means for converting the voices of the plurality of internal conference participants in the specific venue into transmitting signals; and supplying signals to each of the internal conference participants. a sounding means for producing the received signal as voice; a converting means for mutually converting the unidirectional transmitting and receiving signals and the bidirectional transmitting and receiving signal; The present invention is characterized in that it includes a mixing means for mixing the transmission/reception signals exchanged with each telephone set and the transmission/reception signals exchanged via the converting means.

"Effect" The audio of internal conference participants gathered in a specific venue is
After being converted into a transmitting signal by the transmitting means, and converted into a bidirectional transmitting and receiving signal by the converting means, the signal is supplied to the mixing means, and further sent to each of the external conference participants via the call holding means and the telephone line. Each is sent to the telephone. On the other hand, the voices of the external conference participants are supplied from each telephone to the mixing means via the telephone line and the call holding means, and then are output as voices from the sounding means to the internal conference participants via the conversion means. This allows a plurality of internal conference participants gathered in the venue to freely exchange opinions with a plurality of external conference participants via the telephone line.

"Embodiments" Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of the present invention. In this figure, L1 to Ln are subscriber lines connected to the central office exchange, and T and -Tn are telephone lines connected to telephones in the premises.
1 to Hn, respectively. Call holding circuit H1
~Hn is the subscriber line.

When a call signal arrives via any of the subscriber lines, a call path is established using the same procedure as when establishing a TIT call path in a normal telephone line network, and the corresponding subscriber line is =Ln is put on hold one after another and the call is enabled.

When calling signals arrive one after another, each of the corresponding subscriber lines L1 to Ln is sequentially put on hold and placed in a callable state. Such automatic call receiving operation of the call holding circuits H1 to Hn is executed only when the changeover switch of the conference device-telephone switching circuit 4 is set on the conference device side.
If the changeover switch of this changeover circuit 4 is set on the telephone side, the above-mentioned automatic call receiving operation will not be executed,
Each subscriber line ~Ln is connected to the telephone line T, ~Tn, respectively.

Transmission/reception signals (voice signals) sent and received via the call holding circuits H7 to Hn and the subscriber lines that have become available for communication through the call holding circuits H7 to Hn are configured by transformers as shown in Fig. 3. are mixed by a mixing circuit 5. The transmitting/receiving signal mixed by the mixing circuit 5 is supplied to either the converting circuit 7 or the transmitting/receiving circuit 10 via the switching circuit 6. As shown in FIG. 2, the conversion circuit 7 converts the bidirectional transmission/reception signal used in a normal telephone line into a unidirectional voice signal, that is, a reception signal sent to the handset (speaker). Also, the handset (
The unidirectional transmission signal supplied from the microphone (microphone) is inversely converted into a bidirectional transmission/reception signal and sent out, and the transmission signal supplied from the microphone amplifier circuit 8 is sent to the speaker output circuit 9. An operational amplifier is used to separate the input and output signals to prevent howling from occurring due to leakage. The microphone amplification circuit 8 includes a plurality of microphones 11, which are appropriately prepared according to the number of participants in the internal conference.
11. Mix the transmitting signals supplied from...
The signal is amplified and supplied to the conversion circuit 7. The speaker output circuit 9 amplifies the reception signal supplied from the conversion circuit 7 and drives the speaker 12. Further, 10 is a transmitting/receiving circuit,
-Paired handset (presto)! This is to perform input/output amplification for 3.

In the above configuration, when the power switch (shown in the diagram) provided in the power supply unit 14 is turned on and the changeover switch of the changeover circuit 4 is set to the conference device side, the call holding circuits H1 to Hn
is in a state where it executes an automatic call receiving operation, and is in a state where it is waiting for a call from an external conference participant.

As shown in FIG.
When each call holding circuit Ht in this device is called,
-Hn uses the above-mentioned automatic call receiving operation to sequentially establish communication paths and make each of the subscriber lines Lt-Ln available for communication.

Afterwards, the voices of the internal meeting participants gathered at the headquarters were recorded.
A plurality of microphones 11, 11. ... is converted into a transmission signal, amplified by the microphone amplifier circuit 8, converted into a bidirectional transmission and reception signal by the conversion circuit 7, and then sent to the mixing circuit 5.
and further sent to each telephone of an external conference participant via each call hold circuit H, -I n and subscriber line, .about.Ln.

On the other hand, the voices of external conference participants are transmitted from telephones installed at each branch to subscriber lines, ~Ln and call hold circuits H, ~
It is supplied to the mixing circuit 5 via the Hn, and is converted into a unidirectional reception signal by the conversion circuit 7. This reception signal is amplified by the speaker output circuit 9, and is output as audio from the speaker 12 to the participants in the internal conference. Emitted.

As described above, a plurality of internal conference participants gathered in the venue of the head office can freely exchange opinions with a plurality of external conference participants from each branch via the telephone line network. Thereafter, when the conference device-telephone switching circuit 4 is set to the telephone side when the conference ends, several seconds later, all the subscriber lines L I-L that are on hold in the call hold circuits H3 to Hn are n is disconnected, and these subscriber lines L1 to Ln are switched to respective telephone lines T,=Tn.

"Effects of the Invention" As explained above, according to the present invention, a plurality of external conference participants outside a specific venue can receive calls from telephones owned by a plurality of external conference participants via a telephone line network. call holding means for establishing a communication path with each telephone; a transmitting means for converting the voices of a plurality of internal conference participants in the specific venue into transmission signals; and each internal conference participant a converting means for mutually converting the unidirectional transmitting and receiving signals and the bidirectional transmitting and receiving signal; and the call holding means. Since a mixing means is provided for mixing the transmitting/receiving signals exchanged with each of the telephones via the converting means and the transmitting/receiving signals exchanged via the converting means, a plurality of internal conferences gathered in the venue are provided. The effect is that participants can freely exchange opinions with multiple external conference participants via telephone lines, such as conference calls between the company's head office and branch offices, home learning, reading services, etc. It is particularly effective for use in simultaneous broadcasting equipment, various telephone business negotiations, etc.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of the conversion circuit 7 of the same embodiment, FIG. 3 is a circuit diagram showing the configuration of the mixing circuit 5 of the same embodiment, and FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining an example of using the same embodiment. It is a diagram. 1-1, = Hn...Call holding circuit, 5...
... Mixing circuit, 7 ... Conversion circuit, 8 ... Microphone amplification circuit, 9 ... Speaker output circuit, 11 ... Microphone, 12. ...Speaker. Applicant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Claims (1)

[Claims] Establishing a communication path with each of the telephones in response to a calling signal supplied from each of the telephones owned by a plurality of external conference participants outside a specific venue via a telephone line network. call holding means for converting the voices of the plurality of internal conference participants in the specific venue into transmitting signals; A sound generating means for generating a sound; a converting means for mutually converting the unidirectional transmitting and receiving signals and a bidirectional transmitting and receiving signal; A conference telephone terminal device comprising: mixing means for mixing a received signal and a transmitted/received signal transmitted and received via the converting means.