Lucent Technologies Inc.

At+t Corp.

James A Tavares

Michael Edward McCarthy

Sandip Mukerjee

Peter C Gorham

The airtime charge for a receiving wireless telephone station is assigned to an account that is not associated with the wireless telephone station receiving the call. For example, for a telephone call placed from a conventional home wired telephone station to a wireless telephone station, the airtime charge for the receiving wireless telephone station of the call is billed to the account associated with the home wired telephone station. In an exemplary embodiment of the invention, the airtime charge for a receiving wireless telephone station is transferred by a) receiving signaling from the caller that the airtime charge for the receiving wireless telephone station is to be billed to an account specified by the caller that is other than the account associated with the receiving wireless telephone station; b) marking the airtime charge record by the wireless telephone service provider serving the receiving wireless telephone station as one to be billed by another provider of telephone service; c) incorporating the wireless airtime charge of the receiving wireless telephone as part of the charges for the call billed by the other provider of telephone service to the account specified by the caller; and d) remitting the airtime charge collected from the other provider to the wireless telephone service provider. An indication of the transfer of the airtime charge is forwarded to the receiving wireless telephone station and a corresponding indication is supplied for the called party at the receiving wireless telephone station.

Method and apparatus for billing of wireless telephone calls

The problems with reaching unavailable mobile telephones, and the unnecessary costs associated therewith are avoided by a) marking as unavailable a wireless telephone to which a wireless telephone call could not successfully be completed; b) waiting for the wireless telephone to register, i.e., signal its availability to receive calls; and c) notifying the caller of the wireless telephone call that could not successfully complete that the wireless telephone is now available. Optionally, any call attempts to the wireless telephone during this waiting period are disallowed, i.e., no attempt is made to contact the wireless telephone over the wireless telephone service provider's network. Furthermore, resources of the wireless telephone service provider may be conserved, and unnecessary costs avoided, by disallowing call attempts to the wireless telephone during the waiting period, even if the caller of the wireless telephone call that could not successfully complete is not notified of the availability of the wireless telephone upon its registration. Additionally, if the wireless telephone shares communication facilities with a wireless data station, no attempt is made to transfer data to or from the wireless data station during the waiting period. Instead, the data is queued and the queued data is transmitted after the registration is received.

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Eatontown, NJ, United States of America

James A Tavares