Flexible system for real-time rating of telecommunications transactions

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention provides methods and apparatus for rating telecommunication transactions, and for allowing modification by a user of this rating process without requiring reprogramming of the rating system program.
Users of commercial rating systems may have access to input data of the rating system, and to the rating data tables on which the rating system performs its function.
In contrast, the rating system program is typically developed and maintained by the rating system's vendor.
As such, therefore, modifications to the rating system program are not under the user's control.
In one embodiment, the invention preferably allows a user to modify a rating system to handle new transaction input characteristics, and new rating selection criteria, through modification of the input data and the rating data tables, which are both under user control, without requiring modifications to the rating system program itself.
The invention performs the rating of a wide range of services, including cellular and wireline phone calls, fax store-and-forward services, modem services, short message services, and data packet services, at extremely high speed.
Furthermore, the invention is extensible to rate new services using new rate selection criteria and new input data.
The invention permits a user to extend the rating capability along many dimensions, by adding information and rating behavior across at least the following: Additional carriers Additional types of service (fax, messaging, data, etc.
) Additional product IDs (product names, etc.
) Additional characteristics of the service rendered which determined the rate to apply New units of measure New methods to find the rate to use The invention is capable of receiving telecommunications transaction information to be rated, calculating the charges for the transaction, and delivering the results to other software components.
The rating of services measured may be in any unit of measure provided in a supplied rate database.
Thus, the user can rate by the number of fax pages, CDMA messages, kilobytes transmitted, by call duration, or by other criteria