Telecommunications – Radiotelephone system – Zoned or cellular telephone system
Patent
1997-06-09
2000-03-14
Vo, Nguyen
Telecommunications
Radiotelephone system
Zoned or cellular telephone system
455524, H04Q 720
Patent
active
060384565
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a telecommunication system. The present invention is particularly, but not exclusively, concerned with a telecommunications system for mobile telephones.
2. Summary of the Prior Art
In standard land-based telecommunications systems, calls are routed from one fixed point to another, and it is therefore relatively straightforward to determine a switching path for such calls. The originator of the call inputs information to the system (normally the telephone number of the destination) in which the routing information is arranged sequentially. Thus, it is relatively straightforward for the system to determine the switching necessary to achieve the routing, by successively decoding parts of the input information. Any switching point need consider only part of the information.
When the telecommunication system involves mobile telephones, the situation is more complicated because a call to a mobile telephone is not to a fixed point, and therefore the system must determine the location of the destination. Currently, a call to a mobile telephone results in a signal being transmitted to a data storage unit in the form of a Home Location Register unit (HLR) which determines the location of the mobile telephone, and so permits routing of the call to occur.
Inevitably, HLRs have a limited capacity, and some arrangement is therefore necessary to enable telecommunication systems to access multiple HLRs. At first sight, all that is needed is for a plurality of HLRs to be provided, and different mobile telephone numbers assigned to different HLRs.
However, this is not consistent with the aim of providing customer flexibility in a mobile telephone system. Each mobile telephone has two types of number associated with it, one being the number which third parties use to call the mobile telephone (a "MSISDN"), and the other being an identity number (an "IMSI") which is used by the telecommunications system to address the mobile telephone. Using existing techniques, information relating to both of these numbers must be stored on the same HLR.
It is envisaged that users may need multiple MSISDN numbers, for example if a user is to have the possibility of both voice and data communication, in existing systems, any second MSISDN number with a common identity number (IMSI) must be a MSISDN number of the same HLR as the previous MSISDN number. This could be impossible to achieve if, for example, the HLR containing the original information is full. Then the only way that additional services could be provided would require the user to change telephone number, which would be undesirable. This becomes a particular problem if it is desirable that users are able to select their numbers, rather than be provided with them.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To overcome these problems, the present invention proposes that the switch network which connects users to other users, HLRs, and system services, has a register unit associated therewith, which register unit contains information relating each telephone number to a corresponding one of a plurality of HLRs. The relationship between telephone numbers and HLRs should then be freely selectable within the register unit, so that the register unit acts as a converter between the number and the information identifying the HLR.
By providing such a register unit, the fixed relationship between numbers and HLRs is broken, and any number may be assigned to any HLR, assuming space permits.
The register unit may also store further information associated with the mobile telephones which permits the switch network to enable calls from mobile telephones to be routed to different services, depending on the calling mobile telephone itself, in addition to the number dialled.
As a first example, different mobile telephones provided by different organisations (Service Providers) could use the same generic access code e.g. 150, to call the parent Service Provider regarding billing queries for example. It is convenient if such servi
REFERENCES:
patent: 5579375 (1996-11-01), Ginter
patent: 5781858 (1998-07-01), Lantto et al.
"PCS Number Portability" article by Arthur Giordano and May Chan of GTE Laboratories, Inc., Waltham, MA, PIMRC '94/WCN.
"Directory Services for Mobility Management in Private Telecommunication Networks", ICC '93 Geneva IEEE International Conference on Communications, May 23-26, 1993, pp. 1252-1256.
Colby James Edward
O'Neill Dominic Desmond Phelim
Bhattacharya Sam
Orange Personal Communications Service Limited
Vo Nguyen
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