Telefonaktiebolaget Lm Ericsson (Publ)

Karthikeyan Chandrasekar

Robert Törnkvist

JayaKrishnan Kizhakke Pullarappillil

Ramkumar N

Darwin Chandran

K Arunkumar

Ravi Sekhar Reddy V

Gopala Krishnan Ramasubbu

Arvindh Rajesh Tamilmani

Natarajan Thekkan

Sandeep Khemka

A node of a charging system associated with a communication network grants a charging request, with the response including a granted quota of units for authorizing consumption of the involved communication service by a user device, along with an indication of whether the granted quota applies on an immediate basis or on a deferred basis. For example, the response indicates whether quota management is active for the involved communication service, with the granted quota applying immediately to consumption of the service if quota management is active and applying on a deferred basis if quota management is inactive. Providing a granted quota while quota management is inactive offers several advantages, such as proactively providing individual charging sessions with granted units of service consumption that may be used subsequently, upon quota management becoming active, thereby avoiding the 'flood' of charging session requests that would otherwise be generated upon quota management becoming active.

Method and apparatus for managing charging operations for a communication network

There is provided mechanisms for event-based reporting from a second NF to a first NF in an SBA network. A method is performed by the first NF. The method comprises sending reporting instructions of events for a session with the second NF. The reporting instructions comprise a list of triggers conditions for each of the events and information of IEs whose values are cached by the first NF for the session. Each of the trigger conditions is associated with its own set of IEs. The second NF is instructed to provide a report to the first NF when one of the trigger conditions is fulfilled at the second NF. The report comprises values of the set of IEs for the event that caused the trigger condition to be fulfilled. The second NF is instructed to include values in the report of those IEs cached by the first NF only if the values have changed compared to the cached values. The method comprises receiving, on an interface between the first NF and the second NF, the report of the event upon the trigger conditions having been fulfilled at the second NF.

Event-based reporting from a network function in a service based architecture network

Mechanisms for implementing a billing process between a first Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN1) and a second Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN2) for a subscriber of the PLMN1 that visits the PLMN2. A method comprises establishing a smart contract between the PLMN1, the PLMN2, and a Data Clearance House (DCH). The method comprises sending a subscriber usage record, represented by a distributed ledger, of the subscriber from the PLMN2 to the DCH using a blockchain upon the subscriber having visited the PLMN2, wherein the blockchain is based on the smart contract. The method comprises sending the subscriber usage record from the DCH to the PLMN1 using the blockchain.

Blockchain for communication of subscriber data records between public land mobile networks

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Chennai, India

Karthikeyan Chandrasekar