Method and system for communication caller identification information between a remote site and a central monitoring station over PSTN

摘要

A system (10, 100) for communicating information and caller identification between entities (11, 13) over a public switched telephone network (PSTN) (20) includes at least one remote site (11) including a device (14, 115, 117) whose status is to be monitored. The remote site is coupled to the PSTN (20) and is operable to make a call when the device status is to be determined. A monitoring station (13) includes a plurality of call receiving interfaces (26) coupled to the PSTN (20) and a processor (30) coupled to the call receiving interfaces (26). Each call receiving interface (26) is assigned a different telephone number corresponding to information concerning the status of the device. Each call receiving interface (26) conveys caller identification data received from the PSTM (20) and call receiving interface identification data to the processor (30) in response to a call received from the remote site (11) over the PSTN to allow the processor to determine the status of the device and its location without requiring the call to be answered.