Bidding for telecommunications traffic with request for service

Abstract

Because of technological and regulatory changes, telecommunication service is becoming more of a commodity, with competition between service providers for traffic. The herein disclosed invention stimulates this competition and facilitates a service provider's and a consumer's ability to make economic choices between competing telecommunication carriers. In this method and system, telecommunication switches route calls in accordance with economic incentives (e.g., least cost routing) resulting from a bidding process between participating telecommunication carriers (Carriers), administered by a bidding service provider through operation of a central processor, at computer referred to as a bidding moderator (Moderator). The technology required to facilitate forward delivery transactions, in which a buyer and seller agree to the terms of a transaction today but schedule actual delivery for a future time, would be helpful to end users, resellers and Carriers. The Moderator can facilitate such transactions by processing requests for end users or resellers (as buyers) for telecommunications services to be delivered by Carriers in the future. In order to provide the Moderator with sufficient information to process such a request, the buyer enters the information describing the request on a software-derived template and transmits such information to the Moderator.