Many wireless service providers offer wireless communication services, such as wireless voice service and wireless data service via prepaid and postpaid service plans. Prepaid wireless services are popular among customers who are ineligible for a postpaid service plan, such as customers with no or poor credit history and customers that do not want the obligation of a recurring bill. Prepaid customers can purchase voice minutes, data throughput, and text messages at a set price via a variety of methods, such as prepaid cards, Internet transactions, telephone transactions, point-of-sale transactions, and in-call transactions, for example. The prepaid customer can use the service until the purchase minutes, data throughput, and/or messages are depleted, at which point the prepaid customer can replenish the account to continue using the service.
Postpaid accounts are designed such that if the customer exceeds the number of voice minutes, data capacity, text messages, or other services, the postpaid customer will be charged for the excess services on a bill sent to the customer at the end of the billing cycle. Often times, the customer is unaware of the overage and is requested to pay an unexpected bill at the end of the billing cycle. Services, such as AT&T's ROLLOVER® service aim to eliminate overages and accumulate unused minutes for use in future billing cycles.
Prepaid wireless networks face the unique requirement of having to update prepaid accounts to reflect any service rendered in real-time or near real-time. Methods have been developed to send messages to the serving mobile switching center (MSC) instructing the MSC to continue an established call every two minutes. A prepaid account balance is decremented each time a message is sent. The message is sent without regard to the number of minutes available in the prepaid account, therefore all prepaid accounts will be updated via this method.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds