Comptel Corporation

Antti Romppanen

Matti Salonen

A method of online charging in a communication network. The method includes receiving a service request from a user, determining whether the service request is an access network session, a media network session or a service network session, determining if a type of charging model the user wants to use to provide the service request is an event based model, a volume based model, a time based model, an event based model or a combination of the models, determining which network element corresponding to the access network session, the media network session and the service network session in the communication network is responsible for providing the service request from the user, and provisioning identification rules for providing the service request to the network element that is determined to be responsible for providing the service request from the user. Further, the step of provisioning the identification rules comprises updating the rules when the access network session, the media network session and the service network session interact with each other in a charging transaction requested in the service request from the user.

Method, means and a computer program product for managing online charging in a communications network

The invention is intended to create a online charging method for an end user session comprising at least one first charging session and at least one second charging session. The invention is based on using a combination pricing plan as response to a number of different charging requests, and determining the charging by said combination pricing plan, by using during the end user session different proxy components to identify service requests according to different service identification request rules, each proxy component using individual service identification rules.

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Kerava, Finland

Antti Romppanen