摘要:
The present invention relates to arrangements for charging in a packet switched network. Packets are charged differently dependent on which service flow the packets belong to. The charging system comprises a control system and a serving element residing in a packet forwarding system wherein said control system comprises an account function adapted to manage an account of at least one user and a charging policy decision point arranged to calculate a charging policy for allowed services for the at least one user. Moreover, said serving element comprises a token bucket per user adapted to store reservations received from the account function of the user associated with the token bucket and a charging policy enforcement point arranged to perform charging for a plurality of the allowed services by reducing the stored reservation of the token bucket according to the calculated charging policy.
摘要:
An apparatus and method for selecting a payment source to pay for communication services is disclosed. Payment source data corresponding to a plurality of payment sources are received and a cost of communication services is calculated. A plurality of payment sources identified using the payment source data are contacted in order to find one particular payment source that will accept responsibility for paying for the communication services. The calculated cost is conveyed to the particular payment source.
摘要:
The method involves transmitting a recall message for recalling already assigned communication units by a charge management server (6). The recall message is transmitted while receiving a charge balance message for billing charge for a communication service desired by a subscriber, to an access network server. The recall message is transmitted and the balance message is received when an available charge balance of the subscriber is smaller and actual charge balance is higher than a charge value given in the charge balance message for the desired communication service. An independent claim is also included for a charge management server.
摘要:
A method of controlling provision of services from a network element to a subscriber comprising: defining a credit threshold (21) representing the amount of credit remaining to the subscriber below which services will no longer be provided to that subscriber; responsive to a request (Sl) for a first service from the subscriber, defining a quota of service units and, in the event that the credit remaining to the subscriber after funding said quota falls below the credit threshold, returning (S4) a service control indication with said quota; responsive to a subsequent request (S7) for a second service from the subscriber, returning (S8) a defined quota of service units with said service control indication; and monitoring usage (S5) of said service units in providing the first or second service and when it is determined (S6) that the quota has been used up, acting on the service control indication to interrupt said service provison.
摘要:
A method of reserving credit for a mobile subscriber in respect of an IP multimedia service. The method comprises, following initial registration of the subscriber to the IP Multimedia service but prior to invocation of an IP Multimedia service, using the early session establishment procedure to reserve a credit amount at a charging control node and to notify an IP Multimedia Serving Element of the credit reservation, whereupon, at invocation of said IP multimedia service, the IP Multimedia Serving Element is able to proceed immediately with the session establishment.
摘要:
This invention describes a method for carrying out forced booking of reserved credits for the credit management of prepaid accounts within a multi service telecommunications environment. This method can be used in a multi service telecommunications environment (1), wherein a credit management system (8) is in communicative connection with a number of service provisioning systems (3-7), using a telecommunications network (2) and where at least one user of an account can access the network by both mobile and fixed access means (10, 11, 13), characterized in that the credit management system (8) is arranged for carrying out a forced booking in order to update account balance information.
摘要:
This invention relates to a method for providing accounting requests, where an accounting request comprises at least one identifier and relating to a service provided to a user of a communication network. In the method a first accounting request is transmitted and a second accouting request corresponding to the first accounting request is prepared, the second accounting request comprising at least one of the at least one identifier in the first accounting request as correlation information. The second accounting request is transmitted as a retransmitted first-accounting request, if it is determined that retransmission of the first accounting request is required. Also processing of retransmitted accounting requests is discussed.
摘要:
The present invention relates to arrangements for charging in a packet switched network. Packets are charged differently dependent on which service flow the packets belong to. The charging system comprises a control system and a serving element residing in a packet forwarding system wherein said control system comprises an account function adapted to manage an account of at least one user and a charging policy decision point arranged to calculate a charging policy for allowed services for the at least one user. Moreover, said serving element comprises a token bucket per user adapted to store reservations received from the account function of the user associated with the token bucket and a charging policy enforcement point arranged to perform charging for a plurality of the allowed services by reducing the stored reservation of the token bucket according to the calculated charging policy.
摘要:
A communications network in which service flows between an end user and the network are transported via a gateway (8) which identifies different service flows and notifies them to a credit control function (12) of the network. The credit control function grants a cache representing an amount of and end user's credit and/or an amount of network resource to the gateway for the identified service flows and provides instructions to the gateway for the identified service flows which enable the gateway to share units of the caches between service flows, for example if there is a threat of a service flow becoming blocked due to a lack of credit in an end user's account.
摘要:
In a communications network that provides services to a plurality of users, events occurring during service processing are accumulated in an event record and sent to a record processor to perform post-processing, such as assessing charges to be billed to users of the network. Each service processing node in the communications network accumulates event records, bundles them with instructions as to how they are to be processed, and dispatches them to one or more record processors (408). Before being sent to a record processor, an event record is augmented with instructions describing how to perform processing upon the events in the event record. The record processors (408) are general-purpose processors and the instructions for post-processing are carried within the event records themselves. Post-processors are no longer required to be dedicated to a particular purpose such as billing computation. Furthermore, deployment of post-processing function is more timely and can be integrated with deployment of service processing functions to network service processors (410).