Lucent Technologies Inc.

Alcatel Lucent

American Telephone & Telegraph Co., At&t Bell Laboratories

John Brian Reid

Yigang Cai

Min Liu

Jay Z Zhao

Yile Enoch Wang

Timothy Jerome Scale

Ashish Trivedi

Dewey Alcott Frech

Lei Zhang

Peng Wang

Jie Su

Yigal Bejerano

Alok Sharma

Ramachendra Prahlada Batni

Aleksandr Stolyar

Daniel Matthew Andrews

Pramod V Koppol

Michael Rudolph

Xiang Li

Qing He

Frances M Chin

Mark G Hinch

Robert Brunetti

Anton Johnnes Roug

Sreedhar Rao

Sunil Thadani

Laura Scruggs Reizner

Guy H Starner

Anton Johannes Roug

William C Wiberg

Jun Zheng Yang

Frances M-F Chin

Methods are provided for metering the usage, on a group of lines subject to a group user agreement, of the data processing capacity of a network. Implementations include steps of receiving usage reports from respective lines of the group at least when usage quotas granted to the lines are exhausted; maintaining a total, over the group, of usage that has been reported by the lines and of outstanding usage quotas that have been granted to the lines; and maintaining a comparison between the total outstanding group quota and a limit that depends on the total reported group usage, so as to detect violation events when said quota violates the limit. Upon occurrence of violation events, instructions for the processors serving respective lines to reallocate quota are sent selectively.

Method and apparatus of group credit control for wireless networks

A method of processing short message service (SMS) calls for a subscriber's communication device in a communication network is provided. The method comprises: receiving an SMS request involving the communication device at a short message service center; accessing a family access control database storing family access control information received for the communication device; and determining whether the short message service request should be allowed or denied based on the information found in the database.

Method and apparatus for parent-controlled short message service

A method and apparatus for allowing a reseller to securely access and manage scratch cards at a recharge card management system that is maintained by the service provider. The service provider and reseller users of the recharge card management system can create a scratch card batch that is associated with the reseller account identification. The service provider and reseller users can search, view and modify scratch card data based on security and accessibility. Advantageously, the reseller or distributor can only manage and sell scratch card only to its own account identification, thus protecting such transactions against fraud.

Enhanced recharge card management system with reseller users' security and accessibility

An apparatus in one example comprises one or more intelligent network platforms that serve to provide feedback to be played to a calling communication device during a call from the calling communication device for a called communication device. One or more of the one or more intelligent network platforms allow a user of the called communication device to preselect one or more portions of the feedback. One or more of the one or more intelligent network platforms employ signaling to connect the call from the calling communication device to an intelligent network platform of the one or more intelligent network platforms.

Feedback to calling communication device on call connected with intelligent network signaling

A method and apparatus for routing billing request and response messages to a billing server for serving calls by a particular subscriber. When the subscriber originates a call, an original billing request message is transmitted to an agent server. The agent server determines which billing server serves that subscriber and forwards the billing message to the selected billing server. The billing server responds to the request message with billing request data. Advantageously, this arrangement minimizes the problems of updating a large number of subscriber identification/billing server identification databases.

Call authorization and billing message routing capability

This invention relates to a method and apparatus for charging and billing of Circuit Switch, Packet Switch, and IP Multimedia Subsystems in third generation telecommunication systems. The charges for a call are computed by a rating engine, a software system comprising data tables and a program for calculating charges from the parameters of the call, such as the calling and called numbers, the length of the call, and special charge items such as priority service. For calls whose billing cannot be deferred, referred to as on-line billing calls, the rating engine is accessed immediately. For calls whose billing can be deferred, referred to as off-line billing calls, the rating engine performs its function only when the rating engine is not busy rating on-line billing calls, for example, during periods outside the busy hour. Advantageously, only a single rating engine is required, and the capacity of that single rating engine is determined only by the busy-hour volume of on-line billing calls.

Pre-biller capability in enhanced charging collection function (CCF) applications

Calling party identification announcement service (CPIAS) provides an announcement of the caller's name to a called party, so that the called party may accept of reject a call. This invention relates to arrangements for providing CPIAS using centralized announcement synthesis apparatus, under the control of a data base (in accordance with the principles of intelligent networks), within the basic call processing arrangements of the public switched telephone network, without requiring users of the services to have two telephone numbers. Billing entries for the use of the announcement service are made under the control of the terminating switch so that these entries can be readily combined with other billing entries for the called party in order to generate a bill for that party.

Calling party identification announcement service

A packet flow control method where delay data are added into an initial packet as it traverses a packet switching network, and where the receiver of the initial packet, rather than the sender, establishes a window size based on such delay data to be used for the duration of a packet connection through the network. The delay data allow for the calculation of an average rather than an instantaneous network delay such that the flow control mechanism is not dependent on the magnitude of network congestion that happens to be present when the connection is first established. Since the receiver determines the window size, the flow control mechanism is put in place as an integral part of the initial packet exchange used to establish the two-way packet connection rather than requiring an additional packet communication to the receiver after a window size calculation by the sender.

Packet flow control method

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Naperville, IL, United States of America

John Brian Reid