Providing telephone services to fixed locations conventionally involves installing landlines to the locations where telephone services are needed. Installation of landlines may take months in many areas of the world, such as in developing countries and in remote areas of developed countries. In addition to requiring a relatively lengthy amount of time, landline installation is expensive for the service provider as well as the customer in need of telephone service. Therefore, providing telephone services through landline installations is not necessarily a feasible option.
Providing telephone services through mobile phone cellular networks does not require that a landline be installed to the location where telephone services are needed, but wireless mobile phones themselves are expensive. Additionally, usage charges for wireless phones are typically much higher than those for a conventional landline telephone due to telecommunications regulatory provisions applicable to mobile phones and due to the limited availability of radio-frequency bandwidth. Furthermore, the portable nature of wireless phones may periodically result in lower communication quality than landline telephone service. For example, mobile phones are susceptible to dropped calls or noise while moving from place to place, and additionally the antenna of the wireless phone may be inadequate within buildings or other structures due to signal attenuation. Thus, mobile phones are not necessarily a desirable option for providing telephone services.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds