Mci Communications Corporation

Michael Lackman

Lee C Seydel

Douglas P Reiman

The present invention telecommunications system provides validation of authorization codes input by a user for placing a call from a service area of a first telecommunications service provider with a calling card issued by another telecommunications service provider. The present invention allows the subscriber to place a special service call irrespective of whether the signaling protocol of the first service provider is different from the service provider to which the subscriber is a customer of. If the protocol of one telecommunications service provider is indeed different from the other service provider, a gateway residing in an intelligent service network node would convert the signaling protocol of the first service provider into a signaling protocol that is compatible with the other service provider. Consequently, the first service provider can quickly validate the authorization code provided by the subscriber by sending a query to the service provider that issued the calling card to the caller by referencing the LIDB database of the latter service provider. To achieve the conversion of one protocol to another, a system that includes an ISN node having gateways, file servers, a monitoring system, and mainframes is used. The gateway inside the ISN node has a client application program interface (API) component, a translate/convert component, a transaction capabilities part (TCAP) component and a SS7 API component. These various components, together with other controlling and interface components, are able to convert a first signaling protocol, for example a SS7 protocol, into a second protocol, for example a network information distributed service (NIDS) sequenced packet protocol.

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Fairfield, IA, United States of America

Michael Lackman