Subscriber terminal for providing speech-text encoding and telephony service

1. A subscriber terminal comprising:

a network interface that enables communication via a network;

a display interface configured to communicate with a visual display device to display textual information;

a telephone interface configured to communicate with a telephone to convey voice information of a user;

at least one processor configured to utilize a speech buffer to receive at least one of streamed and real-time speech information and to decode and display the speech information as text on the visual display device during receipt of the speech information from the network; and

a detector configured to respond to subscriber inputs in the form of at least one DTMF tone to activate and deactivate speech recognition.

2. The subscriber terminal of claim 1 , wherein the detector includes a dual-tone multiple frequency detector.

3. The subscriber terminal of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor is configured to identify a caller based on speech segments stored in a database.

4. The subscriber terminal of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured to identify at least one of a gender of a caller, soft-spoken words, hard-spoken words, shouting, laughter, or human expression.

5. A subscriber terminal comprising:

means for receiving, at a broadband telephony interface, speech packets;

means for storing the speech packets in a buffer;

means for processing the speech packets to display textual representations thereof as words on a display device; and

means for responding to a command in the form of at least one DTMF tone from a subscriber to activate and deactivate speech processing.

6. The subscriber terminal of claim 5 , further comprising:

means for storing speech patterns in a database, and

means for analyzing and comparing incoming speech obtained by processing the speech packets with speech patterns stored in the database in order to provide speaker identification capability.

7. The subscriber terminal of claim 6 , further comprising:

means for displaying an indication of a speaker identity of a speaker associated with ones of the displayed textual representations.

8. The subscriber terminal of claim 5 , further comprising:

means for analyzing characteristics of incoming speech obtained by processing the speech packets and inserting punctuation in the displayed textual representations thereof in response to the analysis.

9. The subscriber terminal of claim 8 , wherein the characteristics include at least one of changes in tone, volume, or inflection.