Currently, the voice and audio services provided within the telephony networks are designed for a listener with relatively normal hearing. However, the hearing device industry has shown that the customization of hearing devices provides for significant benefit in the understanding of speech and hearing in general. Audio processing techniques used to improve the hearing acuity of a listener are well known in the fields of hearing aids and other devices used for the hearing impaired. It is further well known in the hearing impaired community of the existence of “specialty telephones” designed with features to increase the amplitude of a signal and the clarity of the signal using methods including volume control (gain), tone control (equalization), and other audio processing techniques. These specialty telephones and other related devices are expensive, manually controlled by the user, and have limited features when compared with the mobile and fixed telephones available for normal hearing individuals. Due to the cost, these devices have limited capabilities, and are not manageable or upgradeable. Because of these limitations, the use of such devices is limited to individuals with significant hearing impairment.
In the field of telecommunications networks, network based devices which provide for the enhancement of the quality of audio signals are well known for the processing of signals generically. Such devices are used to perform acoustic echo cancellation, signal amplification, filtering and other such functions generally required to meet the audio quality requirement of certain industry standards and the expectations of the relatively normal hearing individual in relatively quiet environments.
Call routing capabilities for inbound and outbound calls provided by various voice telecommunications networks are well known in the telecommunications industry. The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) features and services are built around the Intelligent Network (IN) and the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) service creation and implementation architectures. In the IN and AIN enabled network, the telephone switch connects to a Service Control Point (SCP) which provides information and logic regarding how to handle incoming and outgoing calls to the telephone switch. AIN services such as “Selective Call Acceptance” allow for forwarding all calls received by a specific customer to another telephone number except calls from a specific telephone number, or groups of numbers, are not forwarded and are routed to the customer's telephone or telephone line. There are many different outbound call routing features possible within the AIN architecture to control the routing of outbound calls including “selective call routing,” “automatic call routing,” “hotline,” etc.
Newer network implementations based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architectures build on the service creation and control capabilities developed under the AIN and provide more flexibility and control of call routing and call control capabilities.
IMS networks include the ability to implement a specific service using an Application Server (AS) where the service control logic exists. An IMS-AS may include features which control call routing and other call features associated with a voice services subscriber. A well known element in the IMS architecture is the Media Resource Function (MRF) which is a network element designed to provide processing of the digitized media carried in a call, including audio based media. One provider of MRF capability is Radisys, with their Convedia media server product line. It is known in the art that such platforms provide for Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE) capability including compensation for acoustic echo, noise compensation, and packet loss based on specific quality metrics. The PSTN AIN architecture did not include a similar function as the IMS MRF but there are other well known methods for processing audio media in the PSTN including the use of an intermediate gateway, or call relay system.
Network based telecommunications elements as described herein and as known in the art may act as gateways, or provide other network functions, which may include audio processing functions. Currently, network based elements that provide audio processing provide the same audio processing methods to all calls that access the audio processing network element.