WO2012013213A1

WO2012013213A1 - Feature access counting

Info

Publication number: WO2012013213A1
Application number: PCT/EP2010/060773
Authority: WO
Inventors: Harish R
Original assignee: Nokia Siemens Networks Oy
Priority date: 2010-07-26
Filing date: 2010-07-26
Publication date: 2012-02-02

Abstract

A mobile communications network element is described that is able to implement or access a plurality of features, wherein one or more of said features include means for indicating when the feature has been successfully accessed. The network element causes a counter to be incremented in response to the indication of a successful access to a feature.

Description

FEATURE ACCESS COUNTING

The present invention is directed to the detection and re^¬ porting of access to features in mobile telecommunications networks .

Mobile telecommunications network elements are becoming in^¬ creasingly feature-rich. For example, prepaid online charging systems have always been a warehouse of such features. Friends and Family, Mobile Local Calls and Home Zones are a few popular examples. Further, the home location register (HLR) has evolved to house and support many innovative fea^¬ tures of which Multi-Card and automatic device detection are two of many examples.

Caught in the midst of enormous demand on delivery times, ra^¬ pid feature development cycles, new technology trends and changing standards to name a few, mobile telecommunications vendors and operators find it difficult to keep track of the usage of the different features that they offer.

A Call Data Record (CDR) is a record generated by an operator containing data relating to the use of the network. Typically, a CDR includes information such as the contact details of individuals making and receiving telephone calls, the du^¬ ration of the calls, the time of day in which the call was made etc. CDRs can be post-processed to provide some infor^¬ mation regarding the usage of particular features, but this requires that the CDRs have the required fields for any par- ticular check. Furthermore, CDRs record data at a very gen^¬ eral level and do not, for example, provide information at the level of individual software features. Accordingly, CDRs do not provide data of the appropriate form to address the problems outlined above. It is possible to store data relating to subscription "flags" for the purpose of switching the features in question on or off. One mechanism for obtaining information regarding module usage would be to scan through the entire database of such flags to get a report of how many subscribers are actually subscribed to these features. Clearly, however, such a me^¬ chanism would provide a view of service subscription data, rather than service usage data.

As increasing numbers of complex services and features are built on top of basic communication frameworks, it is becom^¬ ing increasingly complex and time-consuming to use existing data mining and reporting mechanisms to detect the usage of explicit features at a level of granularity that is useful to operators and vendors .

The present invention seeks to address at least some of the problems outlined above.

The present invention provides a mobile communications net^¬ work element comprising a plurality of features, wherein one or more of said features includes means for indicating when the feature has been successfully accessed, the mobile commu- nications network element causing a counter to be incremented in response to the indication of a successful access to a feature .

The present invention also provides a method of recording feature usage in a mobile communications network element, the method comprising the steps of: indicating a successful ac^¬ cess to a mobile communications feature; and incrementing a counter in response to the indication of said successful ac^¬ cess. In some forms of the invention, the term "successfully ac^¬ cessed" simply requires that the relevant feature be invoked. In some forms of the invention, the term "successfully ac- cessed" requires that the invoked feature be completed.

In some forms of the invention, the said network element fur^¬ ther comprises said counter. The invention may further comprise a database for recording the number of successful accesses to each of a number of fea^¬ tures .

The said features may each comprise a plurality of inter- linked software elements. It should be noted that the "fea^¬ tures" of the present invention are not (or at least not nec^¬ essarily) individual computer code/subroutines, but are com^¬ plete, end-to-end features. The present invention also provides a system comprising a plurality of mobile communications network elements as de^¬ scribed above.

The present invention further provides a computer program comprising: code (or some other means) for indicating a successful access to a feature of a mobile communications net^¬ work element; and code (or some other means) for incrementing a counter in response to the indication of said successful access. The computer program may be a computer program prod- uct comprising a computer-readable medium bearing computer program code embodied therein for use with a computer. Exemplary embodiments of the invention are described below, by way of example only, with reference to the following num^¬ bered schematic drawings. Figure 1 is a block diagram of a system in which the present invention may be used;

Figure 2 is a flow chart showing an algorithm in accordance with an aspect of the present invention;

Figure 3 is a table showing exemplary data generated in accordance with an aspect of the present invention; and

Figure 4 is a block diagram of a system in which the present invention may be used.

Figure 1 is a block diagram of a system, indicated generally by the reference numeral 1, in which the present invention may be used. The system 1 comprises a mobile communications network 2, a network element 4 of a mobile communications network, a database 6 and a data display 8. The network element 4 implements a number of features. As described in detail below, data related to the usage of such features is stored in the database 6 and can be displayed to the user using the data display 8. Figure 2 is a flow chart, indicated generally by the refer^¬ ence numeral 10, showing an algorithm in accordance with an aspect of the present invention. The algorithm 10 starts at step 12, where it is determined whether a particular feature has been accessed. If so, a counter is incremented at step 14 of the algorithm 10.

By way of example, Figure 3 shows a table, indicated gener^¬ ally by the reference numeral 20, showing exemplary data gen^¬ erated in accordance with an aspect of the present invention. The table has a first column identifying a number of features (features 1, 2, 3 and 4 are shown in Figure 3) . A second column indicates the number of times each of those features have been accessed (1234352, 2341233, 362336 and 89234 in the exemplary table 20) . In some embodiments of the invention, a feature is accessed (and this access recorded in the table 20) when that feature has been invoked. In other embodiments of the invention, a feature is accessed (and this access re^¬ corded in the table 20) when the invoked feature is com- pleted.

The data shown in the table 20 will typically be stored within the database 6. Of course, in an exemplary implementation of the invention the usage of many more features than shown in Figure 3 might generally by recorded.

The term "feature" as used in the present description gener^¬ ally refers to a number of inter-linked software elements. It should be noted that the "features" of the present inven- tion consist of not only (or at least not necessarily only) computer code/subroutines themselves, but are complete, end- to-end features that are offered by network elements; such features may involve many subroutines and a particular sub^¬ routine may be used by many features. Accordingly, in the case of a sub-routine that is called by a number of different features of a mobile communications network, the table 20 does not record each separate access to the sub-routine.

Rather, the table 20 records each separate use (e.g. invoca^¬ tion or completion) of the features that call the sub- routine. Accordingly, the term "feature" as used in the pre^¬ sent description generally relates to features that are pro^¬ vided to the end user (i.e. the customer) rather than the software modules that deliver those features. Figure 4 is a block diagram of a system, indicated generally by the reference numeral 30, in which the present invention may be used. The system 30 comprises a mobile communications network 32, a first network element 34, a second network ele- ment 35, a third network element 36 and a fourth network ele^¬ ment 37. Each of the network elements is in two-way communi^¬ cation with the remainder of the network 32, of which they, in use, form a part. The first, second, third and fourth network elements are in two-way communication with a first 38, second 39, third 40 and fourth database 41 respectively. The system 30 also includes a data display 42 that is in two- way communication with each of the databases.

The databases 38 to 41 may form part of the respective net- work elements 34 to 37 or may be separate to those network elements. One or more of the databases 38 to 41 may be con^¬ solidated into a single database.

The data display 42 can be used to display information to a user (or a third party, such as a telecommunications pro^¬ vider) regarding the usage of telecommunications features. The display 42 may provide a user interface to enable a user to interrogate one or more of the databases 38 to 41. The embodiments of the invention described above are illus^¬ trative rather than restrictive. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the above devices and methods may incorporate a number of modifications without departing from the general scope of the invention. It is intended to include all such modifications within the scope of the inven^¬ tion insofar as they fall within the scope of the appended claims .

Claims

CLAIMS :

1. A mobile communications network element comprising a plurality of features, wherein one or more of said features includes means for indicating when the feature has been suc^¬ cessfully accessed, the mobile communications network element causing a counter to be incremented in response to the indi^¬ cation of a successful access to a feature.

2. A mobile communication network element as claimed in claim 1, wherein said network element further comprises said counter .

3. A mobile communications network element as claimed in claim 1 or claim 2, further comprising a database for recording the number of successful accesses to each of a number of features.

4. A mobile communication network element as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein each of said features comprises a plurality of inter-linked software elements.

5. A method of recording feature usage in a mobile communi^¬ cations network element, the method comprising the steps of:

indicating a successful access to a mobile communi^¬ cations feature; and

incrementing a counter in response to the indication of said successful access.

6. A system comprising a plurality of mobile communications network elements as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 4.

7. A computer program product comprising: means for indicating a successful access to a fea^¬ ture of a mobile communications network element; and

means for incrementing a counter in response to the indication of said successful access.