Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/44—Augmented, consolidated or itemized billing statement or bill presentation
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/68—Payment of value-added services
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/70—Administration or customization aspects; Counter-checking correct charges
  • H04M15/765—Linked or grouped accounts, e.g. of users or devices
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/70—Administration or customization aspects; Counter-checking correct charges
  • H04M15/765—Linked or grouped accounts, e.g. of users or devices
  • H04M15/7652—Linked or grouped accounts, e.g. of users or devices shared by users
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/70—Administration or customization aspects; Counter-checking correct charges
  • H04M15/77—Administration or customization aspects; Counter-checking correct charges involving multiple accounts per user
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/01—Details of billing arrangements
  • H04M2215/0104—Augmented, consolidated or itemised billing statement, e.g. additional billing information, bill presentation, layout, format, e-mail, fax, printout, itemised bill per service or per account, cumulative billing, consolidated billing
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/01—Details of billing arrangements
  • H04M2215/0196—Payment of value-added services, mainly when their charges are added on the telephone bill, e.g. payment of non-telecom services, e-commerce, on-line banking
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/72—Account specifications
  • H04M2215/724—Linked accounts
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/72—Account specifications
  • H04M2215/724—Linked accounts
  • H04M2215/7245—Shared by users, e.g. group accounts or one account for different users
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/72—Account specifications
  • H04M2215/724—Linked accounts
  • H04M2215/7254—Multiple accounts per user

Definitions

• the present invention relates to a method for generating charging data for at least one specific user group comprising at least one user terminal, said at least one specific user group having subscribed to a communication network, said communication network comprising at least one exchange entity. Also, the present invention relates to a correspondingly adapted exchange entity of said communication network.
• a plurality of subscribers have subscribed thereto.
• several subscriber groups comprising subscribers with an identical or at least rather similar subscriber profile can be defined.
• a subscriber profile in this connection means the behavior of an individual subscriber belonging to said group, with the subscribers belonging to a subscriber group behaving in an identical or rather similar way.
• the present application and the invention as described below is applicable to all specific subscriber groups which can be recognized, irrespective of the parameter used for recognizing the subscriber group.
• a subscriber group may be represented by the salesmen of a company traveling/roaming within the network and regularly calling their company headquarter. Still further, a subscriber group may be represented by telemetric subscribers / telemetric users.
• a telemetric subscriber is intended to mean a user terminal such as a mobile station MS or just a wireless (non-mobile) terminal which is related to an appliance such as a gas meter or electricity meter or a water meter.
• the terminal sends information from the appliance in the form of messages.
• the messages carry information related to the appliance such as the amount of gas/water/electricity consumed at the appliance.
• a message is a SMS message (Short Message Service) or an USSD message (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) .
• a telemetric user means: no speech calls, but only SMS and/or USSD traffic and/or data calls; low traffic profile, e.g. controllable traffic scheduling (out of busy hours),; no need for continuos mobility management (MM) handling; and limited service profiles, limited service area.
• a typical example can be a mobile station / wireless terminal MS installed next to a gas- or electric- meter, positioned on a fixed place, at a house (no MM) , reporting once a month (low traffic) by SMS (no calls) at night (traffic scheduling) .
• the messages transmitted by said telemetric user terminals are directed to a central database which is a predetermined destination for a telemetric user. Namely, a telemetric user reporting the electricity consumption at an appliance will of course report this to a database of the electricity provider / electricity company.
• SMS normal, status report and/or command SMS
• CDRs are generated (i.e. whether at a Visited Mobile Switching Center VMSC, at Interworking Mobile Switching Center I MSC, at a Gateway Mobile Switching Center GMSC (also referred to as Transit Mobile Switching Center) ; however, although this distributes the CDRs generated within the network, the overall number thereof remains uninfluenced thereby; 4. It can be chosen whether CDRs are generated for Mobile Originated MO, Mobile Terminated MT and/or Mobile Forwarded MF messages; however, any usage of transmission capacity is desirable from a viewpoint of a network operator who provides transmission capacities in the network to be charged for, whereas according to such an approach, some messages could be transmitted for free, as mentioned above;
• none of the previous proposals provides for a satisfactory charging of messages transmitted by a specific user group while avoiding congestion situations in the network and while saving network resources.
• the above first object is achieved by a method for generating charging data for at least one specific user group comprising at least one user terminal, said at least one specific user group having subscribed to a communication network said communication network comprising at least one exchange entity adapted to forward messages transmitted from a respective user terminal of said at least one specific user group to a respective predetermined destination associated to a respective one of said at least one specific user group, wherein at said exchange entity there is allocated a respective counter means to each of said predetermined destinations, said method comprising the steps of: detecting the arrival of a message at said exchange entity, verifying that the origin of said message is a user terminal belonging to one of said at least one specific user groups, identifying said at least one specific user group and said associated predetermined destination, and incrementing said counter means allocated to said predetermined destination associated to said identified specific user group.
• the method comprises a further step of generating charging data (CDR) based on a count value of said counter means; - the method comprises a further step of resetting said respective counter means after generation of charging data;
• CDR charging data
• the method comprises a further step of delivering said message to said associated predetermined destination;
• the method comprises a step of transmitting the generated charging data (CDR) to a billing entity of said communication network, and establishing a bill on the basis of said charging data for said respective specific user group;
• CDR generated charging data
• said specific user group is a telemetric user group
• an exchange entity of a communication network adapted to forward messages transmitted from a respective user terminal of at least one specific user group to a respective predetermined destination associated to a respective one of said at least one specific user group, said exchange entity comprising: a respective counter means associated to each of said predetermined destinations, detecting means adapted to detect the arrival of a message at said exchange entity, verifying means adapted to verify that the origin of said message is a user terminal belonging to one of said at least one specific user groups, identifying means adapted to identify said at least one specific user group and said associated predetermined destination, and control means adapted to increment said counter means allocated to said predetermined destination associated to said identified specific user group in response to signals applied thereto from said detecting, verifying and identifying means.
• said entity further comprises generation means adapted to generate charging data (CDR) based on a count value of said counter means;
• CDR charging data
• control means is adapted to reset said respective counter means after generation of charging data
• control means is adapted to regularly generate said charging data (CDR) after a predetermined period of time.
• control means is adapted to regularly generate said charging data (CDR) when the counter means reaches a predetermined count value;
• said entity further comprises an output means adapted to deliver said message to said associated predetermined destination; - said entity further comprises a transmitter adapted to transmit the generated charging data (CDR) to a billing entity (BILL_SYS) of said communication network adapted to establish a bill on the basis of said charging data for said respective specific user group.
• CDR generated charging data
• BILL_SYS billing entity
• - network resources can be saved and/or saved resources can be used for other purposes than CDR transmission
• a more efficient usage of the communication network resources is thus enabled by provisioning these advanced telemetric and message services for the communication network's customers, while the companies owning the telemetric user system may lower their operating costs as there is no more need for personnel to collect the data, which by the way are more accurate and obtained more quickly when using a telemetric system.
• FIG. 1 illustrates a signaling scenario and method steps executed in connection with the method according to the present invention
• Fig. 2 illustrates a block diagram of those components of an exchange entity of a communication network which are relevant in connection with the present invention.
• Fig. 1 illustrates a signaling scenario and method steps executed in connection with the method according to the present invention.
• a telemetric subscriber i.e. a terminal thereof such as a mobile station, is assumed to represent a subscriber belonging to a specified user group.
• a telemetric subscriber i.e. a terminal thereof such as a mobile station
• a plurality of those telemetric subscribers of one or more subscriber groups may be present.
• the present invention may also cope with the case of plural subscribers of plural subscriber groups.
• the subscriber group or groups have subscribed to a communication network.
• the communication network is assumed to be a GSM network (Global Standard of Mobile communication) and the labeling of the network entities referred to is given with regard to the GSM network as an example. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that the present invention is also applicable and to be implemented to another communication network such as the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) network etc.
• GSM Global Standard of Mobile communication
• UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
• the access network such as a radio access network RAN of GSM and/or UTRAN (Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network) of UMTS are neither shown nor explained.
• a telemetric subscriber terminal sends a message to the communication network. More particularly, the terminal sends a Short Message also known as SMS via the (radio) access network (not shown) to the exchange entity of the network.
• SMS Short Message also known as SMS
• the exchange entity is a Mobile Switching Center MSC. Still further, in case the sent message is an SMS, the exchange entity can be regarded as a cooperation of an MSC and an SMSC (Short Message Service Center) .
• SMSC Short Message Service Center
• the message consists of a message header carrying sender identification information as well as destination identification information such as respective addresses or telephone numbers, and a message body carrying the content /use data of the message.
• the message content includes the amount of consumed gas.
• an "application” also referred to as "destination” in Fig. 2
• the company who provides the gas and bills the consumer for the amount of gas delivered.
• the billing of the company is the billing of the company by the operator of the network for the usage of communication network resources for forwarding the messages to the "application", i.e. the gas providing company.
• step S2 the exchange entity MSC detects the arrival of said message (SMS or USSD, for example) at the exchange entity. Also, the MSC performs a verification that the origin of said message is a user terminal belonging to one of said at least one specific user groups, as well as an identification of said at least one specific user group and said associated predetermined destination.
• the exchange entity MSC increments, step S3, a counter means allocated to said predetermined destination associated to said identified specific user group to which said subscriber belongs.
• step S4 The message is then, in step S4, forwarded to an SMSC cooperating with said MSC for further delivering the message in a subsequent step S5 to the application, i.e. the intended destination of the message.
• the message contents (contained in the message body) is processed further (not shown) .
• charging data (CDR) based on a count value of said counter means are generated.
• said charging data (CDR) can be regularly generated after a predetermined period of time. Nevertheless, it is also possible that said charging data (CDR) is regularly generated when the counter means reaches a predetermined count value (in this case, a cycle would not depend on a lapsed period time but on a predefined billing amount) .
• the generated charging data (CDR) are in step S7 transmitted to a billing entity BILL_SYS of said communication network, which billing entity establishes a bill on the basis of said charging data for said respective specific user group.
• the established bill then charges the owner of the telemetric user group for the usage of the communication network, with the billing being based on the number of transmitted messages.
• a special counter system is introduced.
• the system is located in an exchange entity such as the MSC.
• Counters of the system record the number of mobile originated short messages (MO-SM) from different telemetric users owned by organizations, for example during one months, and generate only one CDR per organization (several if one organization owns many telemetric user systems like gas and electricity) . By doing so the system would be prevented from generating hundreds of thousands or even millions of CDRs per month. This would save capacity in both the MSC (mobile switching center) and Billing System.
• a telemetric users send an SMS message to an application (destination) which records the data in the message to a database.
• the message arrives in an MSC where the called number (B-number) of the destination is analyzed. Analysis includes user category recognition. If the category is "telemetric user” then the counter assigned to the destination / B-number will be increased and or incremented. If the category is not "telemetric user” (fraud situation) the mobile originated short message MO-SM will not be delivered and the counter will be left untouched.
• the SMS continues from the MSC to the application through an SMSC (SMS Center) . After a certain time has passed (for example 1 month) a summary CDR is generated per counter in MSC and sent to the billing system attached to the MSC. Thereby, the network operator will charge the organization owning the telemetric equipment by transactions made during the set period, with the price being defined by a transaction.
• SMSC SMS Center
• Fig. 2 illustrates a block diagram of those components of an exchange entity of a communication network which are relevant in connection with the present invention.
• Each user group comprises a plurality of individual users /user terminals, such as Al, A2, A3 in connection with user group A.
• a message such as a SMS from a respective user to a predetermined destination for the user group to which said user belongs to is sent via the communication network to a destination D_A (for user group A) or D_B, D_C in case of user groups B, C, respectively.
• the exchange entity is for example an MSC of the network.
• This exchange entity comprises a detection means, a verification/identification means, and an output means.
• the message from a subscriber e.g. Al
• the message is decomposed into message header and message body. For example, based on the message header, it is detected that a message SMS has been received.
• the detection result controls the identification/verification means to verify/identify the origin and destination of the message based on the information included in the header.
• the operation of these means is as described above in connection with the authentication in step S2 of Fig. 1.
• the verification/identification means controls the output means to deliver the message to the destination defined by data contained in the message header (e.g. to destination for subscriber group A, i.e. D_A) , as described in connection with steps SI, S4, S5 in Fig. 1.
• the exchange entity comprises a control and timer means, a counter means comprising a counter C_A, C_B, C_C for each user group A, B, C, respectively, a CDR generation means for generating charging data, and a transmitter means for transmitting generated charging data to a billing system entity BILL_SYS of the communication network.
• the control and timer means is triggered accordingly.
• the control and timer means then outputs a count signal and increments the counter (e.g. C_A) associated to the user group • to which the message originating subscriber terminal belongs.
• the counter e.g. C_A
• control and timer means controls the CDR generation means in order to generate charging data based on the counter value (s) and to output these data to said transmitter means for transmission to the billing system entity of the communication network BILL_SYS. (Note that control signals applied from the control means to the transmitter means are omitted in the drawing) .
• the present invention has been described such that based on the count value (s) of the counter (s) charging data (CDRs) are generated and that the CDRs are transmitted to the billing system entity. Nevertheless, it is of course possible to transmit the counter value (s) as such and to provide for the generation of the CDRs at the billing system side.
• the counter value (s) are backed-up at the MSC and/or SMSC or somewhere else in the network, preferably in a non-volatile memory, as the counter values may represent a significant amount of money to be charged by the network operator running the communication network.
• a corresponding information has to be provided in a database, e.g. in the Home Location Register HLR of the network.
• a database may be provided directly in the exchange.
• a copy of a database in the HLR may be downloaded to an exchange entity.
• MO-SM mobile originated messages
• the present invention is easily applicable to mobile terminated messages. For example, assuming a case in which an application (Fig. 2) addresses individual users by a message sent to them. I such a case, the sent message (header thereof) could be analyzed and the number of destination addresses corresponding to a number of addressed user terminals could be counted. Thus, each time such a message is sent, the counter for the user group is not incremented by one but augmented by the number of addressed user terminals.
• the present invention proposes a method for generating charging data for at least one specific user group (A, B) comprising at least one user terminal (Al, A2, A3), said at least one specific user group having subscribed to a communication network (MSC, SMSC, BILL_SYS) said communication network comprising at least one exchange entity (MSC, SMSC) adapted to forward messages transmitted from a respective user terminal (Al, A2, A3) of said at least one specific user group (A) to a respective predetermined destination (D_A) associated to a respective one of said at least one specific user group (A) , wherein at said exchange entity (MSC, SMSC) there is allocated a respective counter means (C_A, C_B, C_C) to each of said predetermined destinations (D_A, D_B, D_C) , said method comprising the steps of: detecting (S2) the arrival of a message at said exchange entity (MSC, SMSC), verifying (S2) that the origin of

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Computer Networks & Wireless Communication (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• Meter Arrangements (AREA)
• Mobile Radio Communication Systems (AREA)

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• 2000
  • 2000-11-28 EP EP00987312A patent/EP1340363A1/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2000-11-28 WO PCT/EP2000/011887 patent/WO2002045401A1/en not_active Ceased
  • 2000-11-28 AU AU2001223604A patent/AU2001223604A1/en not_active Abandoned

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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