At+t Corp.

Brenda B Amarant

Thomas A Dunn

David C McChristian

Michael W Funk

Stephen M Kocan

Mark C Pollman

Kari O'Connell

Robert M Neilon

Ilane L Mathews

William H Desmedt

Erik N Breden

A system for completing air-to-ground telephone calls is arranged so that a call originating from an aircraft is received in a ground station and directed to a special purpose platform disposed in the land-based telecommunications network. The platform, which may be implemented as an interactive voice response system, includes the capability to interact with the caller by (a) collecting billing information, which may be a commercial credit card or a telephone calling card, or other billing mechanism which can be initiated by a request for connection to a telephone operator; (b) validating credit cards and telephone calling cards by initiating a query and receiving a response from elements in the telecommunications network or from an external database; (c) providing auxiliary features such as block calling, free calls, speed dialing, sequence calling, etc.; and (d) depending upon the type of call involved, completing the call as either a traditional 1+long distance call, or as a 0+(e.g., operator assisted) call. After completion of each call, an automated message accounting (AMA) billing record is created and transmitted to the network, for bill processing.

System for completing air-to-ground telephone calls

Charges and balances assignable to a credit card account are controlled and monitored by assigning a purchase limit to the card. More specifically, when a card is used to pay for a telephone call on a telecommunication network, the validity of the card is verified in, for example, a network database and the card record is examined for the presence of a purchase limit. If the card has a purchase limit, the network database determines the type of purchase limit which applies and if the balance is positive. If the balance is not positive and the purchase limit applicable does not authorize the extension of credit, a denial response is sent from the network database to an appropriate local operator system which provides a denial indication to the caller. If the available balance is positive, the network database forwards the balance to the operator system. Based upon the balance returned in the reply from the database, the operator system sends a request to a rating processor to determine the length of time the caller may talk. If the rating database cannot ascertain the amount of time a caller can speak, for whatever reason, the call is denied. Thus, the balance is used to determine how long the caller can speak. At various predetermined intervals during the call and immediately after the call has been completed, the actual charges are calculated and forwarded to the network database. If during a call, the maximum duration is exhausted, the operator system will terminate the call, calculate the actual charges, and forward the charges to the network database. The network database decrements the balance with each intermediate update from the operator system. At the termination of a call, the network database adjusts the card holders balance a final time to maintain the purchase balance accuracy.

Monitoring of charges debited to an account having an assigned limit

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South Orange, NJ, United States of America

Brenda B Amarant