Network charging

• US 20030154174A1
• Filed: 11/20/2002
• Published: 08/14/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/16/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Original Assignee: British Telecommunications PLC (BT Group PLC)
• Inventors: Tassel, Jerome, Briscoe, Robert J
• Application Number:
  US10/276,863
• Publication Number:
  US 20030154174A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/412
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/06 Energy or water supply
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/14 Charging , metering or billing arrangements for data wireline or wireless communications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1403 Architecture for metering, charging or billing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1485 Tariff-related aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/26 with a meter or performing charging or billing at the exchange controlled by an operator
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/30 the meter or calculation of charges not being controlled from an exchange
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2215/22 Bandwidth or usage-sensitve billing
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2215/92 Autonomous calculations of charges in terminal, i.e. meter not controlled from exchange

Abstract

The invention provides a method of charging for a confederated network, such as the Internet, by the user terminals connected to the network. The network provide generates a tariff code, which is multicast to the user terminals. The user terminals then translate the tariff code to automatically generate a meter rule set that can be used to configure a network traffic meter.

Claims

1. A method of charging for use by a user terminal of a communications network, the method comprising the steps of

(a) creating a tariff for network usage

(b) distributing said tariff to a plurality of user terminals connected to the communications network, and

(c) translating the tariff to generate a meter rule set for calculating a charge for use by the user terminal of the communications network.

2. A method according to claim 1 in which the user terminal configures a meter using the generated meter rule set.

3. A method according to claim 1 or 2 in which the tariff translation comprises extracting a set of parameters from the tariff.

4. A method according to claim 3 in which the tariff translation further comprises the transformation of the extracted parameters to generate the meter rule set.

5. A method according to any preceding claim in which the tariff is distributed as a binary file.

6. A method according to claim 5 in which the tariff is distributed as a Java bytecode.

8. A method according to claim 6 in which the network accounting meter configures a meter using the generated meter rule set.

7. A method of operating a network, the method comprising the steps of

(a) creating a tariff for network usage,

(b) distributing said tariff to a plurality of user terminals connected to the communications network,

(c) additionally distributing said tariff to a network accounting server, said network accounting server translating said tariff to generate a meter rule set for calculating a charge for use by a user terminal of the communications network.

9. A method of operating a network, the method comprising the steps of

(a) creating a tariff for network usage,

(b) distributing said tariff to a network accounting server, said network accounting server translating said tariff to generate a meter rule set for calculating a charge for use by a user terminal of the communications network, and

(c) distributing said meter rule set to a plurality of user terminals connected to the communications network.

10. A method according to claim 9, in which the user terminals configure a meter using the received meter rule set.

11. A user terminal for connection to a communications network, the user terminal comprising;

a network interface which receives, in use, tariff data from the communications network;

a meter for measuring use by the user terminal of the communications network;

storage means for storing data received from the communications network and network usage data generated by the meter; and

a tariff translator to generate a meter rule set from said tariff data, said meter rule set, in use, being used to configure the meter.