A method and apparatus for billing a customer for a service that is assessed independent of the calling duration or the per call cost. A service is billed and delivered during a call without the called party being present to receive the call and without operator-assisted verification. A calling party can order a service that is not delivered through the call itself.

A method and system for automatically generating telephone bills that include customer defined or requested summary information. Customer specific data including pricing data and summary parameters are stored. A plurality of records, each record describing a telephone call, are generated. The record is received at a billing analysis system, which determines a priced call value for each call using the record and the customer specific data and determines summary information for the customer using ...

A method and apparatus produce a bill for usage of a telecommunications network. The system obtains from the telecommunications network a set of events on the network; provides a set of schema applicable to a set of products available to the user, the schema for processing events retrieved from the network, selects from the set of schemas, schemas applicable to the products used by the user; and applies the selected schemas to the set of events to process the events into a form ready for bill pr...

An improved system is realized with an arrangement which takes advantage of affiliations that allow concentration of billing. In situations where a party is willing to serve as a financial surrogate for some subscribers of a services provider, savings can be realized by sending the bills for charges accrued by those subscribers ("affiliated subscribers") directly to such a surrogate. The surrogate pays the bills of the affiliated subscribers and may make its own arrangement with the affiliated s...

A sponsored-call service feature enables callers to obtain network-provided telecommunication services toil-free or at a subsidized rate. The sponsored-call service permits a third party sponsor to convey commercial messages to and interact with a caller prior to the caller's access to the network-provided services. After the caller's interaction with the sponsor, the network gives the caller a sponsored-specified restricted access to the network-provided services.

This invention relates to a method and apparatus for preparing a billing record for a special service telecommunications call such as a call over a software defined network or a direct service dialing capability call. These calls are characterized by the fact that in order to properly route and bill such calls, remote shared data bases must be consulted to obtain the necessary information, much of which is recorded in the billing record in order to properly charge the customer and to give that c...

A method and devices for calculating a billing total for a teleconference between a plurality of participants is disclosed. Advantageously, the teleconference may be a telephone conference call. Each of the participants is associated with an identifier of that participant's origin, such as a portion of the participant's telephone caller identification information. At least one particular identifier is used to signify that charges for a caller's participation should be attributed at a lower rate ...

A system and method for managing roaming billing records for a telephone caller's home subscriber network. The invention includes a method for roaming networks to push roaming billing records in real time back to a subscriber's home network.

A bill editor, generator, messaging and insert system and method comprises a portion of a bill production processor designed to create monthly billing statements which are sent to customers and which detail charges incurred over the course of a billing cycle. The bill editor and generator allows billing personnel to design a bill using static text, dynamic text and paragraph areas. Once the report/bill is defined, the report definition is stored in temporary memory for later use. The report defi...

A method for authenticating internet billing using a third party account server. Internet users maintain authentication information such as user PIN codes with a third party account server. An internet user seeking to purchase from and an internet vendor is linked to a third party account server and transmits the appropriate authentication information to the account server for approval. The account server then approves or disapproves the transaction based on the validity of the authentication in...