Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06Q—INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
  • G06Q30/00—Commerce
  • G06Q30/04—Billing or invoicing
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/31—Distributed metering or calculation of charges
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/41—Billing record details, i.e. parameters, identifiers, structure of call data record [CDR]
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/43—Billing software details
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/49—Connection to several service providers
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/51—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP for resellers, retailers or service providers
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M15/00—Arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication ; Metering, charging or billing arrangements for voice wireline or wireless communications, e.g. VoIP
  • H04M15/68—Payment of value-added services
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/01—Details of billing arrangements
  • H04M2215/0164—Billing record, e.g. Call Data Record [CDR], Toll Ticket[TT], Automatic Message Accounting [AMA], Call Line Identifier [CLI], details, i.e. parameters, identifiers, structure
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/01—Details of billing arrangements
  • H04M2215/0196—Payment of value-added services, mainly when their charges are added on the telephone bill, e.g. payment of non-telecom services, e-commerce, on-line banking
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/46—Connection to several service providers
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/54—Resellers-retail or service providers billing, e.g. agreements with telephone service operator, activation, charging/recharging of accounts
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04M—TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04M2215/00—Metering arrangements; Time controlling arrangements; Time indicating arrangements
  • H04M2215/96—Distributed calculation of charges, e.g. in different nodes like for mobiles between HLR and VLR, or between the terminal and the billing function

Definitions

• the invention relates generally to the accessing of services in a communications system. More specifically, the invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling billing in connection with service provision.
• a service here refers generally to a process in which a client contacts a content server and a session is established between the two.
• IP-based (IP; Internet Protocol) packet services to the mobile environment, which is characterized by less bandwidth and poorer connection stability in comparison to fixed networks, and where the terminals have many fundamental limitations, such as smaller displays, less memory, and less powerful CPUs, as compared to fixed terminals.
• IP-based (IP; Internet Protocol) packet services for the mobile environment will occur at an increasing rate in the foreseeable future.
• the increasing market demand is based on the rapid increase in the popularity of the Internet: Internet users are often also mobile subscribers and thus may also want to use in their mobile terminals the services familiar to them from the Internet environment. This commercial demand in turn enables investments necessary for the development of mobile services.
• the said new technologies include GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), for example.
• GPRS aims at providing high-quality services for GSM subscribers by efficiently utilizing the GSM infrastructure and protocols.
• WAP defines a set of standard components enabling communication between mobile terminals and servers providing service in the network. WAP utilizes proxies which connect the wireless domain with the WWW domain.
• the proxy In order to find out the price related to a resource requested in a request from a client, the proxy intercepts all resource requests directed to a content server.
• the proxy caches each request and sends a header request to the content server, requesting the content server to transmit a header associated with the requested resource back to the proxy.
• the header informs the proxy about the billing and/or access information associated with the requested resource, whereby the proxy authenticates the client's right to receive the requested resource whenever the header indicates that there are billing and/or access restrictions involved.
• the billing information (such as the price) related to the resource is in conjunction with the resources in the content server, and the proxy queries the information by means of the header request.
• the objective of the invention is to obtain a solution for eliminating the drawbacks described above, while also bringing about a solution allowing the free placement of the pricing information coupled with a minimum need for server modifications.
• the objective of the invention is to devise a mechanism, which allows chargeable services to be billed so that the prices can be controlled and maintained efficiently, especially in larger networks or sub-networks, where the services can include content from a plurality of content providers.
• the idea of the invention is to use a proxy/gateway for detecting the resource requests which relate to a chargeable resource, and for mapping to another identifier the resource identifier, such as the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), received in a request.
• the said other identifier which is called a locator in this context, refers to the pricing information associated with the requested resource.
• the locator is an identifier identifying the whereabouts (i.e. address) of the pricing information.
• the pricing information is then retrieved from the address to which the locator refers, and billing is requested from a separate billing entity, using the pricing information retrieved.
• a method for controlling billing in a communications network is provided, the method comprising
• the detection of those resource requests addressing a chargeable resource includes the filtering out of requests which clearly point to a free resource, so that only those resource requests which are not filtered out are passed further to the mapping process.
• the pricing information can be placed anywhere in the network, it is preferable to store at least part of it in conjunction with a proxy/gateway which can detect the requests relating to a chargeable resource and find out the address of the pricing information. In this way, at least part of the pricing information retrievals can be carried out without sending messages to the network.
• a corresponding benefit relates to a proxy which includes said billing entity.
• the proxy performs the above detection and mapping steps, stores the pricing information, and serves as a billing server.
• a proxy can be a WAP gateway, for example.
• FIG. 1 illustrates the basic architecture of the present invention
• FIG. 2 illustrates the architecture of one embodiment of the present invention
• FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating the operation of one embodiment of the system
• FIG. 4 illustrates the message exchange between the elements of the system
• FIG. 5 illustrates the layout of a content URL
• FIG. 6 illustrates the separation of requests relating to chargeable content from requests relating to free content
• FIG. 7 illustrates the treating of the content URL as a sequence of words in the URL mapping process
• FIG. 8 illustrates a search tree used in the URL mapping process
• FIG. 9 illustrates the final mapping from the content URL to the price URL
• FIG. 10 illustrates an example of the structure of a record in a price repository.
• FIG. 1 is a schematic presentation of the system of the present invention.
• the client typically downloads content or resources from the content server, i.e. from the point of view of the client, the service consists of the retrieval of resources/content from the content server.
• the resource requests (also called content requests in this context) from the client are directed to a proxy or gateway GW which (1 ) detects the requests for chargeable content and (2) maps the resource identifier, such as the URL, in each of said requests to a price information locator, such as a price URL, which indicates the address in the network of the pricing information related to the chargeable resource referred to in the request.
• the proxy/gateway retrieves the pricing information from the indicated location, which can be a common price repository/database PR in the network, and requests billing from a billing server BS.
• the billing server and the gateway/proxy can be combined so as to be located at the same site. Since the pricing information can be placed freely, it can reside in a separate server somewhere in the network, in connection with the gateway/proxy or the content server, or it can be distributed among several servers.
• the billing server of the system according to the invention can be similar to the billing server described in U.S. Patent 6,047,051 , for example.
• the billing server according to the invention can further have a book-keeping feature for maintaining up-to-date information on the requests utilizing pricing information from a price repository.
• FIG. 2 is a schematic presentation of the architecture of one embodiment of the invention, the proxy being now a WAP gateway and the client UT being a WAP-compliant terminal.
• the WAP architecture includes a gateway with encoders and decoders.
• an encoder encodes the content received from a server into a compact encoded format.
• a decoder decodes the encoded data received from a radio channel before the data is forwarded to the server.
• the gateway Due to its role as the operator-controlled intermediary between the radio network and the Internet, the gateway knows, inter alia, the MSISDN number (Mobile Subscriber ISDN Number) of the subscriber relating to the client.
• MSISDN number Mobile Subscriber ISDN Number
• the connections between the terminal and the gateway typically use WSP (Wireless Session Protocol), whereas the connections between the gateway and the server typically use HTTP.
• WSP Wireless Session Protocol
• the gateway therefore, performs translations from the WAP protocol stack (WSP, WTP, WTLS, and WDP) to the WWW protocol stack (HTTP and TCP/IP).
• WTP WAP protocol stack
• WTLS WTLS
• WDP WWW protocol stack
• HTTP and TCP/IP HTTP and TCP/IP
• the gateway can also perform content conversion. If the server provides WWW content (such as HTML), the gateway can translate the WWW content into WAP content (WML).
• FIG. 2 shows two separate price repositories, PR1 and PR2, and two content servers, CS1 and CS2.
• the billing server BS is located at the gateway, although for this invention the billing server can be anywhere in the network. It will be understood that there can be more than two repositories or servers.
• the client When a WAP-compliant client requests content from a content server, the client connects, through a browser, to the operator-controlled gateway GW and sends a GET request with the address, i.e. the URL, of the desired resource (step 30).
• the gateway initiates a process in which it first detects whether the requested resource is chargeable or not (step 31). If the gateway finds out that the request is related to a chargeable resource, it maps the URL of the resource to the URL of the corresponding pricing information, i.e. performs a price location mapping (step 32). Having obtained the URL of the pricing information, which is here denoted by URL', the gateway sends a HTTP GET message requesting the pricing information specified by URL' (step 33).
• the price repository addressed to by the pricing information URL sends the gateway a price file including the pricing information of the requested resource (step 34).
• the gateway then extracts the desired information from the file (step 35) and sends a billing request to the billing server (step 36).
• the billing request includes preferably at least the subscriber ID (i.e. the MSISDN), the price received from the price repository, and the URL of the chargeable content.
• the billing server acknowledges successful billing (step 37)
• the gateway creates an HTTP session with the content server concerned and sends a GET request for the content specified by the URL (step 40).
• the content server processes the request and sends the HTTP content to the gateway (step 41), which then returns the encoded WAP content to the client (step 42).
• the client can be informed of the price of the resource after the billing server has acknowledged successful billing at step 37, so that the client has a chance to accept or reject the price.
• These steps which have been denoted by reference marks 39a and 39b in FIG. 4, are optional since the client typically knows the price of at least some services in advance. If the billing server does not, for some reason, acknowledge billing at step 37, an error message informing the client of the situation is returned to the client at step 39a. Furthermore, if it is detected at step 31 that the original request received from the client does not specify chargeable content, but rather free content, the process jumps to step 40, i.e. the process is continued according to steps 40, 41 , and 42.
• the proxy/gateway must rapidly process large amounts of content requests, only some of which relate to chargeable content. It is, therefore, important that the gateway (1) efficiently separates the requests for free content from the requests for chargeable content and (2) quickly maps the content URL to the price URL whenever it detects that the content URL points to chargeable content.
• the proxy/gateway GW receives a content URL, which consists of a protocol identifier 2, a domain name 3 of the content server, a directory path 4 leading to the directory where the content is located, and the content file name 5.
• FIG. 6 illustrates a fast method for filtering out the majority of requests for free content. It is assumed here that only some content servers, identified by their domain names 3, offer chargeable content.
• the WAP gateway processes a resource request, it passes all domain names through a hash function 6, which maps each domain name to an integer value k; said k can be any integer between zero and an upper limit N-1.
• a bit string P consisting of N bits is then indexed with the integer value output by the hash function, whereby a certain bit P[k], denoted by the reference numeral 9 in FIG. 6, of the bit string is arrived at. This bit is called here the payment flag. If the value of the payment flag is one, the content may be chargeable, and the procedure continues. However, if the value of the payment flag is zero, the content is not chargeable, and the content request can be forwarded directly to the content server. In other words, the process can jump from step 31 directly to step 40 (cf. FIG. 3).
• the operator of the WAP gateway sets each such bit in the bit string to the value of one, to which at least one of the domain names with chargeable content is mapped by the hash function.
• the other bits are set to zero. Since the hash function may be overlapping, i.e. since it may map several domain names to the same integer value k, the fact that the payment flag 9 has the value of one does not necessarily indicate that chargeable content does exist behind this domain name, let alone that the content specified by the actual URL being processed is chargeable.
• the filtering operation illustrated in FIG. 6 provides a means for speeding up the processing of most content requests.
• the operator of the WAP gateway can control the number of potential hash overlaps with well-known methods by choosing the hash function and the size of the bit vector in a suitable way. If the payment flag 9, which is read in the above-described manner, has the value of one, the procedure continues as follows.
• the domain name 3, the directory path 4, and the file name 5 of the content URL are now handled as a sequence of words 10, separated by the slash character ".
• the separate words of the content URL are illustrated in FIG. 7.
• the word sequence is then matched in a known manner against a word sequence search tree or some other suitable data structure or database.
• a simple example of such a search tree 11 is illustrated in FIG. 8.
• the search in the tree proceeds from root 13 through nodes 14 to payment locations 12, which are either addressed from the leaf nodes of the tree or which compose the leaf nodes of the tree.
• the dash character "*" indicates a node which matches any sequence of words, while each of the other nodes match one word in the sequence.
• the organizing of such a search tree is obvious to a person skilled in the art, while the technology preferred at any one time depends, for example, on the size of the search tree and on the storage types available.
• the payment locations may have two types of data: either a free content indicator 17 or a combination of a prefix 15 and a suffix 16.
• a free content indicator 17 is found in the search process, the content is not chargeable, and the request is sent to the content server. In other words, the process can jump from step 31 directly to step 40 (cf. FIG. 3). If a prefix-suffix pair is found instead, the content is indeed chargeable and a pricing information retrieval must be performed. For this purpose, a price URL is computed from the original content URL, as illustrated in FIG. 9, where the price URL is denoted by the reference numeral 20. The words that match the search tree 11 (FIG. 8) are replaced with the prefix 15, and the suffix 16 is appended to the result. The protocol identifier 2 and the unmatched part 19 of the word sequence remain unchanged.
• the domain name 3 remains in its original form, the directory path 4 is replaced by a new one, and a suffix is appended to the file name 5.
• This is a suitable mechanism for cases where the pricing information is on the same server as the content, but in a different directory.
• the suffix By appending the suffix, the type of file to be returned as pricing information can be defined without adding any new intelligence to the HTTP server; for instance, the ".txt" ending of the URL typically denotes a plain text file.
• the pricing information file can be of any type supported by the HTTP server containing it. Owing to the prefix, and the way a word sequence is replaced by it, the pricing information can reside anywhere in the network.
• the search tree mapping can begin by first mapping from the word sequence www.provider.com/content/forwap to the prefix and suffix pair www.provider.com/content/forwap & .pr.txt which leads to overall URL mapping as follows: http://www.provider.com/content/forwap/wapstack.wml -» http://www.provider.com/content/forwap/wapstack.wml.pr.txt
• the search tree mapping can be carried out by first mapping from the word sequence www.provider.com/content/forwap to the prefix and suffix pair www.prices.com/provider.com & .pr.txt which leads to overall URL mapping as follows: http://www.provider.com/content/forwap/wapstack.wml -> http://www.prices.com/provider.com/wapstack.wml.pr.txt
• any domain name can be used, including a domain name referring to the WAP gateway; hence the pricing information can be on the WAP gateway itself.
• the pricing information can even be retrieved from a database, rather than from a separate file. This is achieved, for instance, by using the known CGI (Common Gateway Interface) technique of creating dynamic content for the HTTP requests.
• CGI Common Gateway Interface
• the search tree mapping is performed by mapping from the word sequence www.provider.com/content/forwap to the prefix and suffix pair www.prices.com7provider.com & (empty suffix) which leads to overall URL mapping as follows: http://www.provider.com/content/forwap/wapstack.wml -> http://www.prices.com7provider.com/wapstack.wml
• the HTTP request to the resulting price URL then executes a CGI script at the HTTP server http://www.prices.com with the argument string provider.com/wapstack.wml
• the CGI script can now separate the argument string into two keys, the "provider.com” identifying the content server and the
• the protocol name can be changed when desired in addition to the prefix 15 and the suffix 16, for instance by adding the price URL protocol name as a third field in the payment location 12 of FIG. 8.
• the proxy/gateway can efficiently separate the free content URLs from the chargeable content URLs, as well as map the content URLs efficiently to the price URLs.
• the location of the pricing information can be freely chosen, as well as the way of storing it and the protocol for accessing it.
• FIG. 10 shows an example of the structure of a price file/record in the price repository.
• the last field shown in the figure indicates the way billing is settled. This field is preferably optional, and it can be overridden by the settlement method indicated in the user profile, which may be in the billing server, for example. Instead of the billing being included in the normal phone bill, the billing may also be settled through a credit card, an automatic bank transfer, etc.
• the price repository/database can send the pricing information directly to the billing entity, and optionally a confirmation to the proxy/gateway.
• the idea of the invention can also be applied to services in various other types of networks or systems.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
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• 2001
  • 2001-11-15 AU AU2002215069A patent/AU2002215069A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-11-15 WO PCT/FI2001/000991 patent/WO2002044962A1/en not_active Application Discontinuation
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