Telephonic communications – With usage measurement – Call charge metering or monitoring
Patent
1998-01-27
2000-04-18
Loomis, Paul
Telephonic communications
With usage measurement
Call charge metering or monitoring
379112, H04R 1500
Patent
active
060524502
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to billing for communications usage. In particular it relates to a billing system responsive to usage events in a communications network to process event data to support invoice production.
2. Related Art
In communications networks such as public switched telecommunications networks (PSTN), the customer receives charges based on usage of the network. Hence a billing system needs to detect usage of the network and to process data in respect of that usage so as to output a bill or other charging mechanism.
For instance, when telephone calls are established across the British PSTN, records are created at the exchanges recording details about the call. The details will include information such as duration of the call, time of day of the call, start and end, the originating telephone line and destination telephone line. This information is periodically accessed by billing systems and processed into invoices which are sent out to the customer.
A problem with present billing systems is that they can be very inflexible. For instance, when a communications service provider wishes to update its charges or wishes to introduce new services over the PSTN, a protracted and difficult upgrading process can be required to enable the billing system to cater for the new charging regime.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a method of processing data for producing a bill for usage of a communications network, the method comprising:
i) receiving event data from the communications network, the event data concerning network usage by a user;
ii) providing a set of schemas applicable to communications services available to users by means of the network, at least one schema containing service specific data and at least one rule, or an identifier for at least one rule, for use in processing received event data in respect of that service;
iii) selecting from the set of schemas one or more schemas applicable to the event data received; and
iv) applying the selected schema(s) to the event data to process the event data for bill production.
Preferably, the method further comprises:
v) storing a generic data processing structure, comprising an ordered set of data processing nodes which are ordered for the processing of event data relating to communications services available over the network, each node having an associated schema from the set of schemas; and
vi) storing user specific information which identifies a set of services selected from the communications services available over the network and allocated to that user selecting a subset of the data processing nodes which have associated therewith schemas for processing network event data in respect of the selected set of services.
The schemas may be stored in the nodes of the generic data processing structure but it may be more convenient that they are stored in a separate data structure, the generic data processing structure containing identifiers for the schemas rather than the schemas themselves.
Although the term "user" is used above, the user may in fact be one of many representatives of a customer. For instance, a customer may be a multi-national company. In this case, it will be understood that the "user specific information" can in fact be relevant to all users of one particular customer.
Embodiments of the present invention have the advantage that they can be relatively easily modified, for instance to cater for changes in a charging regime. Firstly, the services available over the network may change. In that case, the set of schemas or the generic data processing structure can be updated. Alternatively, a customer may choose to add or delete a service from their specific set of services, or to change the specification for a particular service. In that case, the customer specific information can be updated.
According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided apparatus for processing data for producing a bill for usage of a communi
REFERENCES:
patent: 5027388 (1991-06-01), Bradshaw et al.
patent: 5659601 (1997-08-01), Cheslog
NOMS 90. IEEE 1990 Network Operations & Management Symposium, Feb. 11, 1990-1914, San Diego, CA US., p. 1-10 XP000534180 R.L.Aveyard et al.: "New Billing System Development" see p. 9-p. 10.
Tencon '89 Nov. 22-24, 1989, Bombay, India, pp. 593-599, XP000203943 I. Benyacar et al.: "Concepts in recording of services" see the whole document.
Allison David Stephen
Glass William George
Hawthorne David Martin
Mairs Andrew
British Telecommunications public limited company
Loomis Paul
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