Telecommunications – Radiotelephone system – Zoned or cellular telephone system
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-07
2002-05-28
Maung, Nay (Department: 2681)
Telecommunications
Radiotelephone system
Zoned or cellular telephone system
C455S414200, C455S421000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06397072
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a service means to provide a service to a user of a first terminal of a telecommunication network, to a method realized by such a service means and to a telecommunication network including such a service means.
In order to provide an indication of the background art which can be regarded as useful for understanding the invention reference is made to the document European Telecommunication Standards Institute Standard:
TR 22.70 V3.0.0 (1998-03) entitled “
Universal Mobile Telecommunication System
(
UMTS
);
Service Aspects; Virtual Home Environment
(
VHE
) (
UMTS
22.70
version
3.0.0).
This document describes the Virtual Home Environment concept and its constituent parts of a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System. A concept called service environment is introduced to describe how virtual home environment services will be made available on demand to a user traveling with its terminal in any location. The concept of virtual home terminal is discussed in order to describe how a virtual home environment can be made available in any terminal. A virtual home environment is defined as a system concept for personalized service portability, across network boundaries and between terminals. The concept of the virtual home environment is such that universal personal telecommunication system UMTS users are consistently presented with the same personalized features in whatever network and whatever terminal, wherever the user may be located. The exact configuration available to a user at any instant will be dependent upon the capabilities of the user service identity module, called hereafter USIM, terminal equipment and network currently being used or on the subscription restriction. Such a USIM is a unique personal identification of a user to a subscriber and a service provider. A user with its USIM in another terminal, receives maximum capability provided depending on the limitation of the terminal.
A virtual home environment is created by a combination of the capabilities located in the service provider, network operators and the terminal equipment. In effect, the virtual home environment of a user is considered as a distributed user profile. The profile outline is owned by the service provider, and it is distributed between the terminal equipment, personal identification card, network operator and service provider. This means that to the service provider, the virtual home environment appears as a list of capabilities, preferences and settings appropriate to the user and its subscriber. It is also described in the above cited document that a commercial relationship is required between a service provider and a network operator, either directly or indirectly.
The components involved in realization of a virtual home environment of a user are the following: one user, one service provider, one or more value added service providers i.e. content providers of services such as video on demand or entertainment information provider, one USIM i.e. unique personal identification of the user, one IC card, one subscriber, one subscription of the subscriber to the above mentioned service provider, one or more terminals, one or more network operators.
A user is associated with one service provider and the service provider provides virtual home environment according to the subscription. The service provider can use a plurality of network operators in order to support the virtual home environment for the user.
Individual users have a virtual home environment which is based on a subset of the total services. Whilst the user may have a set of services he would expect to be offered, these are only offered if permitted by the subscriber and the service provider. From the user's point of view, the use of the network is hidden.
Compared to existing telecommunication networks such as a mobile telecommunication network GSM, a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System UMTS provides more advanced access capabilities such as e.g. higher available bandwidth, higher Quality Of Service and QOS negotiations. This provides known service providers and network operators more capabilities to offer services to its users. Indeed, existing services of e.g. a GSM network could be presented in a more user friendly way by e.g. representing the existing services with icons and, furthermore, advanced services will be offered by exploiting the advanced UMTS access capabilities.
Currently, a telecommunication network such as GSM network provides with the existing access antenna's a global coverage whilst the introduction of UMTS i.e. the third generation of mobile systems, only provides a very limited so called island coverage. Indeed, a user which is located with its terminal outside such an UMTS coverage area can only get access to the limited set of services or less advanced services provided by a service provider of a telecommunication system with a global coverage and is not able to access a richer set of services provided by an UMTS system.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide a service means of a telecommunication network such as the above known service providers but which has not the above described drawback, i.e. which is able to provide a service to a user of a first terminal of a telecommunication network which enables the user to get access to a richer set of services provided by an UMTS network.
According to the invention, this object is achieved by means of the service means described in claim
1
, by the method of claim
8
realized by such a service means and by the telecommunication network of claim
9
including such a service means.
The invention is based on the insight that by providing to a user of a first terminal of a telecommunication network, location information concerning the location of a UMTS coverage area, the user is enabled to transport its first terminal to this UMTS coverage area where its first terminal is enabled to access the richer set of services e.g. a predefined universal mobile telecommunication service of a universal mobile telecommunication system.
Therefor, according to the invention a retrieving means, a first determining means and a forwarding means is included in the service provider.
The retrieving means is included to retrieve with a coverage area from a storing means a location information that is related to this coverage area. The storing means stores a plurality of relations between a coverage area of such a UMTS network and its respectively related location information. In the event when a user with its first terminal is located outside each coverage area of the plurality of coverage area's and desires to use a predefined UMTS service, a location information which is associated to a coverage area is determined according to this storing means by the service means. In this way, the retrieving means retrieves one or more location information and provides it to the first determining means.
The first determining means that is coupled to the retrieving means selects, upon receiving of an initiation signal, out of one or more retrieved location informations a selected location information. This selection is based upon predefined rules.
The selected location information is provided to the forwarding means.
The forwarding means forwards the selected location information towards the user. In this way the user is enabled to transport its first terminal to the selected coverage area according to the selected location information. Indeed, the user might walk or drive to the provided selected location information. Once the first terminal is located inside the selected coverage area, the first terminal is enabled to access the predefined universal mobile telecommunication service.
It has to be explained that an initiation signal can be generated when a users wants to use a predefined UMTS service e.g. by selecting it on the display of its terminal and that the UMTS service is not available. Indeed, when the user is located in a location without coverage for this UMTS system, he
Peters Marco Johannes Hubertus
Vosters Jean
Alcatel
Vuong Quochien B.
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