Methods and apparatus for prefetching an audio signal using an audio web retrieval telephone system

In one aspect, the invention relates to a method for pre-fetching an audio signal for a user. The method includes establishing a telephone call from a user of an audio web telephone system, providing a system greeting; determining a user profile of the user and retrieving one or more audio signals from an Internet protocol ("IP") network based on the user profile while the user is listening to the system greeting. The method further includes storing the one or more retrieved audio signals, obtaining a request for an audio signal from the user, retrieving the requested audio signal to the user from the stored one or more retrieved audio signals and converting the requested audio signal to a packet based signal conforming to a telephony packet protocol.