Cellco Partnership

Bell Atlantic Mobile, Inc.

Kevin Patrick Meehan

Christopher James Shunk

Roger Gurnani

Robert Samuel Crouch

The usage limited postpay service, for mobile wireless communication customers, utilizes a governor platform that estimates all appropriate usage charges and applies those charges in substantially real-time against a pre-set spending cap or limit for each customer. When the customer reaches the limit based on estimated charges, further usage is prohibited, even if the customer reaches the limit during an ongoing call or communication session. The actual bill for service, however, is generated in the normal manner after calls made or received during each billing cycle of the postpay service. The customer may deposit money or make payments against billed amounts, to reset the limit in the database associated with the governor platform. Use of the postpay billing approach allows the carrier to offer the cap or limit on essentially any of the carrier's normal postpay service plans, for example, including any or all of the carriers one-rate service plans.

Postpay spending limit using a cellular network usage governor

A service is provided in which a landline telephone user can subscribe, for a fixed set fee, to billing coverage for any and all calls placed to a mobile CPP destination from the subscriber line, regardless of call duration. The fee, preferably, may be added to the subscriber's monthly bill. In response to placement of a telephone call to a CPP subscriber station, a land line network data base is accessed to obtain a call processing record for the called station to determine whether that the called station subscribes to CPP service. If so, a call processing record for the calling station is accessed to determine whether the calling station subscribes to the fixed fee billing for CPP calls. If so, call processing proceeds through a system tandem that formulates an IAM signaling message to be transmitted to a mobile system MSC. The signaling message includes the originating telephone number in altered form so that the MSC can identify the call as not requiring air time rating, as neither party will be billed for the air time usage.

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Yardley, PA, United States of America

Kevin Patrick Meehan