METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FACILITATING INSTALLATION OF PACKET-SWITCHED TELEPHONY EQUIPMENT ON A SUBSCRIBER PREMISES

1 . A residential gateway for providing packet-switched telephony service over a broadband communications network, comprising:

data terminal equipment having an interface for communicating with customer premises equipment; and

a self-installation agent for generating signals that are rendered as audio prompts that guide a user through a process for installing the residential gateway so that packet-switched telephony services are available to the user through the customer premises equipment.

2 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the self-installation agent is configured to communicate the signals to the customer premises equipment for rendering thereon.

3 . The residential gateway of claim 1 further comprising a speaker for rendering the signals as audio prompts.

4 . The residential gateway of claim 1 further comprising a broadband modem for communicating data between the data terminal equipment and the broadband communications network.

5 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the self-installation agent further comprises a first electronic memory segment in which data representative of the audio prompts are stored.

6 . The residential gateway of claim 5 wherein the self-installation agent further comprises a second electronic memory segment that stores executable instructions for coordinating the generation of the signals at appropriate times during installation of the residential gateway.

7 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the customer premises equipment is a telephone.

8 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the data terminal equipment includes a CODEC for converting audio signals to and from audio data and a DSP for processing the audio data, wherein the executable instructions control the operation of the DSP to generate the audio prompts.

9 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the packet-switched telephony service is implemented over a connection that conforms to a voice-over-IP protocol.

10 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the self-installation agent is configured to determine that a first step in the process has been completed before generating signals that are to be rendered as audio prompts for a second step in the process.

11 . The residential gateway of claim 1 wherein the self-installation agent is configured to establish communication with a service provider over the broadband communications network to activate the telephony service.

12 . A method of facilitating installation of packet-switched telephony equipment on a subscriber premises, comprising:

generating a first sequence of audio signals that guide a user through a first of a plurality of steps in a process for installing the residential gateway so that packet-switched telephony services are available to the user through customer premises equipment; and

generating a subsequent sequence of audio signals to guide the user through each remaining one of the plurality of steps in the process after each preceding step has been completed.

13 . The method of claim 11 further comprising determining that the first step in the process has been completed before generating the subsequent sequence of audio signals.

14 . The method of claim 12 wherein the generating steps are performed by the packet-switched telephony equipment.

15 . The method of claim 12 further comprising rendering the audio signals with a speaker associated with the packet-switched telephony equipment.

16 . The method of claim 12 further comprising rendering the audio signals with a speaker associated with customer premises equipment connected to the packet-switched telephony equipment.

17 . The method of claim 12 further comprising establishing communication with a service provider over the packet-switched telephony equipment to activate the telephony service.

18 . At least one computer-readable medium encoded with instructions which, when executed by a processor, performs the method of claim 12 .