Flexible billing architecture

• US 20060084410A1
• Filed: 10/19/2005
• Published: 04/20/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Seven Networks LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Seven Networks Inc
• Inventors: van Gent, Robert, Sutaria, Jay, Gustafson, Brian, Nanjundeswaran, Sridhar
• Granted Patent: US 8,010,082 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/408
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/14 Charging , metering or billing arrangements for data wireline or wireless communications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1428 Invoice generation, e.g. customization, lay-out, database processing, algorithms for calculating the bill or formatting invoices as WWW pages invoicing in general G06Q30/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/43 Billing software details
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/44 Augmented, consolidated or itemized billing statement or bill presentation
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/8278 Event based
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/24 Accounting or billing

Abstract

A flexible billing system captures communication events on a more granular level then current communication systems. The captured communication events can then be aggregated into different event categories and combined with other event parameters to provide a wider variety of billing options to mobile network operators. The flexible billing system can be integrated with existing billing and provisioning systems. Thus, subscribers can be billed for enabled data access services and services are only enabled for billable entities.

Claims

1. A communication management system, comprising:

one or more processors identifying different communication events and parameters associated with a mobile device according to a configurable event tracking table, some of the one or more processors then combining the identified communication events and parameters into a report.

2. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configurable through the event tacking table to identify service based events that correspond with direct mobile device actions or non-service events that correspond with administrator generated actions.

3. The communication management system according to claim 2 wherein the service base events include data access events used for viewing or manipulating email, calendar, appointment, or data files and the non-service events include activating or deactivating a mobile network access account.

4. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configurable to categorize the identified events into event-based billing reports that identify a number of different text or voice access events initiated by the mobile device.

5. The communication management system according to claim 4 wherein the event-based billing reports identify different email, calendar, or contact viewing and manipulation operations.

6. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configurable to categorize the identified events into time-based billing reports that identify when or how long the mobile device is connected to an enterprise network or service.

7. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configurable to categorize the identified events into service-based billing reports that identify different services used by the mobile device.

8. The communication management system according to claim 7 wherein the one or more processors identify Internet Service Providers (ISPs) associated with some of the events and generate reports containing the events associated with the same identified ISPs.

9. The communication management system according to claim 7 wherein the one or more processors combine identified events associated with a same service identifier and a same user identifier into a same user billing report.

10. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configured to categorize the identified events into session-based billing reports according to wireless sessions established by the mobile device.

11. The communication management system according to claim 10 wherein the session-based billing reports include a session start time, session end time, and session identifier for the identified sessions.

12. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein the one or more processors aggregate the identified event data according to associated user identifiers, event identifiers, service identifiers, or session identifiers.

13. The communication management system according to claim 1 wherein:

at least one of the processors is located in a central management server that forwards transaction requests from the mobile device to an enterprise network that sends transaction responses back to the mobile device; and

at least one of the processors is located in the enterprise network and sends event identifiers for the transaction requests and transaction responses back to the central manager served for generating billing reports.

14. The communication management system according to claim 13 wherein the management server sends the event tracking table to the enterprise network and the enterprise network then identifies and sends event identifiers back to the central management server according to events and parameters identified in the event tracking table.

15. A method for tracking billing events, comprising:

identifying communications associated with a mobile device;

identifying different types of service related events in the communications associated with mobile device initiated communication events and non-service related events associated with system administration related events; and

outputting in real-time or in a batch mode billing information that identifies particular types of service related events and non-service related events in the communications.

16. The method according to claim 15 including identifying the identified service and non-service related events according to a configurable event table.

17. The method according to claim 15 including distinguishing between different types of user sessions, enterprise sessions, or service sessions in the non-service related events.

18. The method according to claim 17 including generating reports indicating a non-service session is added, deleted, suspended, activated, or reactivated.

19. The method according to claim 15 including distinguishing between different types of email, contacts, and calendar actions in the service related events.

20. The method according to claim 19 including identifying different viewing, deleting, adding and editing operations for the email, contacts, and calendar actions and generating a billing report that assigns different charges for some of the different identified operations.

21. The method according to claim 20 including identifying a number of viewing, deleting, adding and editing email, contacts, and calendar actions associated with the mobile device for a particular time period and including the identified number of actions and time period in the billing report.

22. The method according to claim 15 including:

identifying an event that requests sending or viewing a file;

identifying the size of the sent file associated with the event; and

identifying the send or view event and the size of the associated file in the billing report.

23. The method according to claim 15 including:

identifying a file request event;

identifying a type of file transferred pursuant to the file request event; and

billing for the file transfer according to the type of identified file.

24. The method according to claim 15 including categorizing events in the billing report according to a service type identifier and a user identifier associated with the events.

25. The method according to claim 24 including using a mobile device identifier, mobile device phone number or an IP address as the user identifier.

26. The method according to claim 15 including aggregating the service and non-service related events according to different user, service, or time categories.

27. The method according to claim 15 including generating a billing report that identifies a number of initiated mobile device sessions independently of how long the mobile device is connected in the sessions.

28. An event tracking system, comprising:

a management server tracking events associated with wireless data communications between a wireless device and an enterprise network or between the wireless device and a Internet Service Provider (ISP), the management server configurable to track different configurable events at different configurable granularities and with different configurable associated parameters and then output the tracked events and parameters into a report.

29. The event tracking system according to claim 28 including an event table that identifies a list of available tracking events and tracking parameters, the management server generating a report containing the events and parameters enabled in the event table.

30. The event tracking system according to claim 29 wherein the management server sends the event table to the enterprise network or to the ISP which then tracks the events enabled in the event table and sends the tracked events back to the management server for generating the report.

31. The event tracking system according to claim 28 wherein the management server separately categorizes the events associated with the enterprise network and the ISP into different reports.

32. The event tracking system according to claim 31 wherein the management server separately categorizes events associated with different Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

33. The event tracking system according to claim 28 wherein the management server tracks different electronic mail (email), calendar, or contact manipulation activities and categorizes the different activities such that they may be used for billing these activities at variable rates.