WO2004019633A1

WO2004019633A1 - Telecommunications services apparatus and methods

Info

Publication number: WO2004019633A1
Application number: PCT/GB2003/003638
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jeffrey Wilson
Original assignee: Intellprop Limited
Priority date: 2002-08-21
Filing date: 2003-08-20
Publication date: 2004-03-04
Also published as: GB2409380A; AU2003255825A1; GB0503548D0; GB2409380B

Abstract

A text message is identified by an SMS router (2) by means of characteristics, such as addressing (which may be an alpha destination address), message content or user configurable settings, as belonging to a particular category of text messages. When so identified, the text message is diverted away from a short message service centre (4) to a message transformation means (3) which transforms characteristics of the text message, and returns the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original message sender.

Description

TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES APPARATUS AND METHODS

This invention relates to telecommunications services apparatus and methods, such as in the field of mobile telephone networks and messaging services.

Messaging on mobile networks, and in particular text messaging, has grown significantly since its introduction. It is foreseen that in the future, advanced services will continue to fuel this growth as users find that the mobile terminal becomes increasingly useful for a variety of aspects of communication and information retrieval.

Currently, the predominant usage of messaging services on mobile networks is for person to person text messaging, which in the case of GSM networks is supported by the Short Message Service (SMS.) Comparable messaging technologies exist for other mobile network architectures, and next generation messaging systems for GSM (Enhanced Messaging Services EMS, and Multimedia Messaging Services MMS) are being introduced; collectively these are hereon referred to as text messaging services.

Other uses of text messaging services include person to Host, and Host to person, where a Host is a network equipment or third party equipment designed to source and/or sink text messages. Hosts typically provide message collection facilities for voting events, competitions or information services and/or message source facilities for subscription services or advertising.

Information services may require a user to send a text message to a specified number or short code, causing the network to direct the message to a particular Host service. The Host then responds to the message with the required information and the reply is transmitted back to the user. Alternatively a subscription service may be invoked, whereby the Host sends a number of information messages over a period of time as requested by the user. Charging for such services is achieved in a number of ways, including premium rate charging for the user request and/or 'reverse' billing of the user for the reply.

For an information request, message round-trip transit time from user to Host and then from Host back to user can be typically 20 seconds or more due to the need to transit the network twice. Each transit of the network comprises two parts, a Mobile Originated MO part from the user's terminal to the network, and a Mobile Terminated MT part from the network to the Host equipment. The service therefore normally requires one MO + MT transit for the request and one MO + MT transit for the reply. For services such as gaming, this two-transit delay reduces the immediacy of the service, and hence the attractiveness of the interaction to the user.

According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided telecommunications services apparatus for use with a telephone network, the apparatus being operable to identify a text message by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, to divert such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, to transform characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and to return the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

According to a second aspect of the invention there is provided telecommunications services apparatus for use with a telephone network, the apparatus being operable to identify a text message that has an alpha destination address by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, to divert such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, to transform characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and to return the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

According to a third aspect of the invention there is provided a method of processing text messages in a telephone network, the method comprising identifying a text message by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, diverting such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, transforming characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and returning the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

According to a fourth aspect of the invention there is provided a method of processing text messages in a telephone network, the method comprising identifying a text message having an alpha destination address by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, diverting such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, transforming characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and returning the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

In this context, characteristics of the text message include but are not limited to addressing, content and user configurable settings. The message returned to the sender could have its source address modified to be an address representative of the equipment or service, thereby facilitating a further transaction by the user, using a reply function built in to the user's terminal. The message may be originated by a user within the home network or by a user that is roaming, as the equipment may be so placed in the home network so as to intercept all mobile originated messaging traffic from subscribers of the network whether they be roaming or not.

Preferably the implementation of the apparatus can identify a category of text message while the message is still in Mobile Originated MO form, i.e. as it enters the network and before it arrives at a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC.) For GSM this architecture is readily achievable by means of SMS Routers, which are normally placed in a network so as to carry and selectively route all MO text traffic. The SMS Routers can implement the function of identifying a category of text messages and can route these messages selectively to an associated subsystem, which may be either external or internal to the SMS Routers, that can provide the desired transformation of the text message. Having been transformed, the message is then returned directly to the user in Mobile Terminated MT form.

The return MT transmission is also preferably carried out by the SMS Router, without the message ever passing through an SMSC. Delivery via an SMSC could be used as a fallback in the event that the user was temporarily not reachable directly, although this would not normally be the case since the user was in communication with the network only moments previously when the original MO message was submitted. It can be seen that the transaction from user to apparatus and back to user represents only a single MO + MT transit of the network and hence this significantly reduces the load on network resources, providing a direct economic benefit. The single transit also typically halves the transit delay normally experienced on current 'information' type services.

A key aspect of any implementation of the invention is the capability to identify a message as a message to be transformed. A feature of the SMS router is its ability to examine all aspects of a text message, including addresses, content and user settings. Using these capabilities, services may be defined which make use of, for example, content keywords or alpha destination addresses as triggers to activate certain transformations and to return the results directly to the user.

A further key aspect of the invention is that it allows alpha addressing to be used with text messaging. For example, a message may be sent by a user to a car rental company, using the company name, which is memorable, rather than a number as the address. It is this kind of ease of use which has contributed largely to the success of the Internet. The usability of alpha addresses in telephone networks provides a strong driver for implementation of the invention. Due to people's natural use of language, names are much easier to remember than numbers. Alpha addresses also allow association with brands, and the fact that alpha addressing can provide a close association between messaging and marketing will lead to strong financial incentives to implement widespread alpha support in networks. The present invention may provide a key building block in the support of alpha addressing, since the invention is able to intercept messages that have alpha addresses and provide appropriate processing for them, whether this be simple address translation, or re-direction to specialised or third party processing engines.

Alpha names may also be trademarked or otherwise protected, while numbers may not.

Further aspects of the invention provide a computer program for carrying out the above method, and a storage medium on which such computer program is stored.

The invention will now be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying single figure drawing, which shows a block-diagram of telecommunications services apparatus according to an embodiment of the invention.

Referring to the drawing, users are connected to a mobile telephone network either directly ('on-net') or indirectly whilst roaming ('off-net') and are able to send mobile originated text messages via a mobile switching centre (MSC) 1. The MSC 1 is connected to an SMS router 2 which is able to examine message characteristics, such as addressing, content and user configurable settings. Dependent upon characteristics of the message, the SMS router 2 is operable to identify and select certain messages. These selected messages may be transformed by a message transformation means 3, which may be either fully or partly internal or external to the SMS router 2. If the transformation means is external to the SMS router 2, it may involve interaction with one or more third party equipments. The apparatus is further operable to transmit the transformed message either directly back to the sender or via a storage means such as a short message service centre (SMSC) 4. In the case of direct transmission, the SMSC route may be used as a fallback in the event of failure to deliver directly.

The SMS router 2 may, for example, be a Telsis (RTM) SMS Router, manufactured by Telsis Limited. This equipment is capable of connection to mobile telephone networks using standardised signalling protocols including SS7 and TCP/IP. The message transformation means 3 may be, as described below, equipment as disclosed in EP-A-1 185 119.

Detailed operation of an embodiment of the invention is now described by means of example applications of the invention, with reference to the drawing. One such application example is operable to automatically provide textual airline information in response to queries sent by users using text messaging.

Currently these users would normally have to call the airline's information department using a voice call, and these assistance calls are very expensive for companies to provide. Furthermore the telephone number to call can be difficult to determine, especially if the mobile user is away from his office or home. The textual alternative service exemplified here requires no knowledge of telephone numbers or company locations, just the name of the company, brand or service to be contacted. In this example, mobile subscribers who have queries about an airline's arrival or departure times instead send a text message including the flight number, using the name of the airline (e.g. BA, Iberia, Continental) (RTMs) as the destination address, in order to receive a rapid response to their query.

The ease of use of a system that allows, for example, the text 'BA123' to be sent by text message to the address 'BA' to provide an immediate response with flight details and expected arrival time is highly advantageous.

In the above example the system operates as follows. The message is transmitted via the MSC 1 and via the SMS router 2. The SMS router 2 examines every message that passes through and checks the destination address for a match against a list of destination addresses stored in an attached database. This match process may be achieved using service logic and data internal to the SMS router 2, by using an attached external database, and/or by using external service logic such as a service control point (SCP), and/or by another means. In this example the destination address 'BA' is matched by the router, identifying the message as destined for a particular application associated with British Airways. In this example the application is resident on a third party server, and the SMS router 2 is operable to direct the message over a suitable interface (not shown) to the BA server. The Mobile Originated message is converted by the SMS router 2 to a form suitable for transmission to the BA server, for example using TCP/IP and possibly via a wide- area network, in such a way as to allow the server response to be transmitted back to the sender. This is preferably achieved by including the address of the sender (CLI) and the identity of the service requested (BA123) in the message to the server. As an alternative, the address of the sender could be retained by the SMS router 2, and other means used to correlate the request and the response.

Upon reception of the message the BA server processes the message using textual rule matching or another technique, and derives either a response or a 'no match' condition. The operation of such textual engines is outside the scope of this description, which is primarily concerned with the means for routing queries and responses to and from such an engine. In the event of a match, the appropriate response is formulated into a message and returned to the SMS router 2. The address of the sender or other correlation means is included in the response to the SMS router 2. In the event of no match, a suitable error message may be sent to the user.

The response is then formulated into a Mobile Terminated message by the SMS router 2 and transmitted to the user. This retains the advantage of a single transit of the network by each message transaction.

In another example, a user wishes to contact the Customer Services department of his telephone network operator to obtain an answer to a query regarding operation of the network, his handset or available services. It would be very convenient if the network operator implemented the present equipment, which would allow the subscriber to send a text message in order to receive a response directly from the network. An alpha address is preferred because it is easy to remember. For example the text string HELP, NETWORK or TELCO could be used. The user enters his question, for example 'How do I turn on delivery reports?' as a text message, and sends the message to the alpha address HELP. The message is intercepted using techniques described herein, and the message is directed to the appropriate server for generation of a response.

It is clear that, with time, users' demands for access to information and data will only increase, and current experiences with pay-television show that users are prepared to pay for access to services that benefit them. Alpha is a key factor in ease of use for access to information, and the present technique allows networks to provide intuitive and easy access to an increasing wealth of information services, and to derive revenue from their use.

The possibilities for types of information accessible by text messaging means are boundless, and many examples capitalise on the benefit of mobility when traditional sources of information are not normally available. A few examples include — • Information sources such as weather or road congestion, e.g. send to the address 'WEATHER' or 'TRAFFIC.

• Branded services such as promotional responses, competitions e.g. send to 'COCA COLA ' or 'CRUNCHIE' (RTMs).

• Emergency assistance, e.g. text to 'VISA', 'BARCLAYCARD' or 'AMEX ' (RTMs) if you lose your credit card.

• Access to companies, e.g. text to 'ANIS' or 'HERTZ' (RTMs) to find nearest car rental depot.

• Access to encyclopaedic text engines or 'wizards' that are designed to process natural language questions and provide responses about any factual topic e.g. text to 'WIZARD'. Further details of such implementation are described in

EP-A-1 185 119.

• Topic-based services aimed at school-children that encourage young people to use text, e.g. send question to 'CHEMISTRY', 'MATHS' or 'HISTORY'.

Alpha addressing can provide further benefits. An example would be contacting a company when the location of the company is unknown, or possibly abroad. In these circumstances, obtaining the telephone number can be quite time consuming. Contacting the airline 'LUFTHANSA' (RTM) is easy when the name can be used directly as a text address, whereas obtaining the phone number is less easy.

A further advantage of the invention is obtained by means of logging all attempts to access information. This allows the information provider(s) to be aware of the types of information that are being requested, and to dynamically update the information sources according to demand. This is a benefit that is not available to traditional publishers; once a book is sold, the publisher has no means of determining the success or failure of users' references to it. Furthermore the information accessible via the present equipment may be kept up to date and errors corrected, whereas traditional information sources begin to go out of date as soon as they are published.

Billing issues may also be handled by the SMS router 2 if not already handled by the MSC 1. The SMS router 2 may generate billing records for post-pay customers, and may also interrogate and debit a pre-payment system before allowing access for prepay customers.

The invention could be implemented on platforms other than SMS routers, noting that maximum advantage is gained by recognising messages while still in the MO domain, and before any storage by the network.

In so far as the embodiment(s) of the invention described above may be implemented, at least in part, using software-controlled processing apparatus, it will be appreciated that a computer program providing such software control and a storage medium by which such a computer program is stored are envisaged as aspects of the invention.

Claims

1. Telecommunications services apparatus for use with a telephone network, the apparatus being operable to identify a text message by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, to divert such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, to transform characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and to return the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

2. Telecommunications services apparatus for use with a telephone network, the apparatus being operable to identify a text message that has an alpha destination address by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, to divert such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, to transform characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and to return the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

3. Apparatus according to claim 1 or claim 2, wherein the apparatus is operable to change the text message from mobile originated to mobile terminated form prior to returning the transformed text message to the original sender.

4. Apparatus according to claim 1, claim 2 or claim 3, wherein the characteristics of the text message include message addressing.

5. Apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the transformation of the message addressing involves the source address of the text message being modified to an address representative of the apparatus.

6. Apparatus according to claim 4 or claim 5, including routing means operable to compare the destination address of the text message with a list of destination addresses stored in a database, in order to determine whether the text message belongs to said category of text messages.

7. Apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the characteristics of the text message include message content.

8. Apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the characteristics of the text message include user settings.

9. A method of processing text messages in a telephone network, the method comprising identifying a text message by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, diverting such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, transforming characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and returning the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

10. A method of processing text messages in a telephone network, the method comprising identifying a text message having an alpha destination address by means of characteristics of the text message as belonging to a category of text messages, diverting such an identified text message away from a short message service centre of the network, transforming characteristics of the said identified text message according to characteristics of the said text message, and returning the transformed text message in mobile terminated form to the original sender.

11. A method according to claim 9 or claim 10, including changing the text message from mobile originated to mobile terminated form prior to returning the transformed text message to the original sender.

12. A method according to claim 9, claim 10 or claim 11, wherein the characteristics of the text message include message addressing.

13. A method according to claim 12, wherein the transformation of the message addressing involves the source address of the text message being modified to an address representative of the apparatus.

14. A method according to claim 12 or claim 13, including comparing the destination address of the text message with a list of destination addresses stored in a database, in order to determine whether the text message belongs to said category of text messages.

15. A method according to any one of claims 9 to 14, wherein the characteristics of the text message include message content.

16. A method according to any one of claims 9 to 15, wherein the characteristics of the text message include user settings.

17. A computer program for implementing a method according to any one of claims 9 to 16.

18. A storage medium storing a computer program according to claim 17.