 Image Number 2 for United States Patent #5592478.
A broadband conference system for having a video conference between a number of subscribers (S1, . . . , S3) includes a switching unit (SU) to which those subscribers are coupled and a conference control unit (CCU) also coupled to that switching unit. To establish a conference, a subscriber first sets up a connection to the conference control unit and then transmits thereto the address of a second subscriber involved in the conference. The conference control unit then establishes a connection, over the switching unit, to the second subscriber. In a similar way other subscribers are added to the conference which is controlled and held over the thus established connections.
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