In prior art telecommunication switching systems providing wireless service for wireless mobile units (also referred to as cellular telephones), the wireless mobile units allowed a user the capability of being able to place and receive calls at any time from any location. However, there are many situations where the user does not want the wireless handset to ring on an incoming call or to receive a visual indication of an incoming call. Examples of such situations are restaurants and meetings. Whereas, the user may not want the wireless mobile unit to ring or give a visual indication for many incoming calls, the user does want to know when selected people are calling by displaying those peoples names on the wireless mobile unit. Further, the user of the wireless mobile unit wants to retain the ability to talk to a calling party whose name is being displayed on the wireless mobile unit. Similar problems are experienced with wired telephone station sets.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,070,525, telephone companies in the United States have offered a feature called call blocking for individual telephone subscribers. The call blocking feature allows a telephone subscriber to key in telephone numbers from which the subscriber does not wish to receive telephone calls. Telephone subscribers utilize this feature principally to block calls from a telemarketing service or collection agency. Of necessity, this feature allows a limited number of telephone numbers to be designated as being blocked. Hence, the feature cannot be used to allow only small selected groups of individuals to call a telephone subscriber.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,723,273, discloses a system which allows a telephone user while talking on a first telephone call to forward a second telephone call to call coverage by activation of a send call button. The telephone user can subsequently retrieve the second call at any time by actuation of a call retrieval button on the user's telephone set. The telephone user is required to manually forward each telephone call by actuation of the send call button, and if the user wishes to retrieve the call, the user must actuate the call retrieval button. Whereas, the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,723,273, allows a user of a wireless mobile unit the capability of performing call forwarding on calls being received, the system still requires the user to perform a physical act for each received call.
Also known in prior art systems, is the send-all-calls feature. This feature allows a user of a telephone set to designate that all calls directed towards that telephone set should be transferred to call coverage. This feature does not allow the user to specify certain callers which will not be transferred; nor, does the feature allow the user the opportunity to retrieve a call once that call has been transferred to call coverage. U.S. Pat. No. 4,436,963 describes the send-all-calls feature.