Telecommunication Systems, Inc.

Telecommunications Systems, Inc.

Lewis Tuttle, Jr

Donghong Gao

Kevin E Jackson

Shawn Geraghty

Ricardo Andresol

Paul Casto

A short message service (SMS) over SGs solution comprising an SGs application part (SGsAP) gateway. The SGsAP gateway is positioned between a mobile management entity (MME) on a long term evolution (LTE) network and a short message service center (SMSC)/home location register (HLR) on a circuit-switched (CS) network to permit SMS messages to be passed between the two domains. The SGsAP gateway performs centralized routing to home public land mobile networks (HPLMN) on the circuit-switched (CS) domain. An SGs interface is used to route messages between an SGsAP gateway and a mobile management entity (MME) on a long term evolution (LTE) network. The inventive solution does not require CS networks to support an SGs interface. In accordance with the principles of the present invention, a mobile management entity (MME) need only maintain a single SCTP association to a SGsAP gateway.

Short message service (SMS) over SGs

A prepaid messaging solution that utilizes a pre-delivery debit query to tariff a short message, coupled with an additional debit query performed once necessary billing information has been acquired. A short message is tariffed prior to message delivery via a pre-delivery debit query to a prepaid server. During message delivery, the prepaid server is queried a second time, following the HLR query performed by the Short Message Service Center (SMSC). This subsequent debit query bills a subscriber for any additional service fees discovered throughout message delivery, e.g., international/roaming fees, etc. If either the pre-delivery debit query or the subsequent debit query indicates that a subscriber has insufficient account balance to deliver a short message, the message is prevented from being delivered. If a message is dropped due to lack of account balance, any funds debited throughout the attempted message delivery may be credited back to the subscriber's prepaid account.

Prepaid short message services revenue capture

Text messages with alphanumeric addresses are delivered to mobiles and external short message entities (ESMEs) which do not support alphanumeric addressing, providing meaningful fallback handling. Additionally, the invention enables delivery of SMPP messages from ESME or SMPP networks which can only originate numeric addresses, yet provide for mapping to alphanumeric addresses for delivery to the mobile. A two-way mapping is provided between alphanumeric addresses and SMS short-codes to enable delivery of text messages with alphanumeric addressing in networks which contain mobiles and/or ESME's that lack support of alphanumeric addressing. An ESME can send a text message using an alphanumeric origination address, without knowing which handsets support the capability, and which do not, or whether handsets are on CDMA, or GSM, or UMTS, or networks, or can continue to send using a numeric origination address. The SMSC provides conversions to alphanumeric addresses on behalf of the ESME and the mobile.

Alphanumeric address mapping for non-homogeneous short message networks

A WAP-free, IETF-Specification Compliant Multimedia Message Service Center (MMSC)-Multimedia Message Service (MMS) User Agent Interface based on the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is provided, as well as an all-HTTP multimedia messaging technique in general, using HTTP POST and GET techniques, between mobile stations and multimedia messaging service centers (MMSCs) for multimedia message (MM) submission and delivery.

Growing community of inventors

Stevensville, MD, United States of America

Lewis Tuttle, Jr