Patent ID: 8824459
Filing Date: 2014-09-02
Classification: H04L,H04M

Abstract:
1. A method to estimate market share of a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) carrier, comprising: (1) querying a plurality of VoIP carrier servers to determine the VoIP carrier server that owns a telephone subscriber number; (2) in response to the querying, obtaining a plurality of messages operable to determine whether the telephone subscriber number is found within any one of the plurality of VoIP carrier servers; (3) when the telephone subscriber number is not found within any one of the plurality of VoIP carrier servers, placing a partial call to the telephone subscriber number from a VoIP number within a selected VoIP carrier network; (4) in response to placing the partial call, determining whether the telephone subscriber number belongs to the selected VoIP carrier network based on a signaling parameter retrieved from the selected VoIP carrier network; (5) repeating (3) and (4) for another selected VoIP carrier network when the telephone subscriber number does not belong to the selected VoIP carrier network; (6) associating a VoIP carrier with the telephone subscriber number when the telephone subscriber number does belong to the selected VoIP carrier network; (7) repeating (1) to (6) when a total number of telephone subscriber numbers queried is less than a sample size; and (8) determining market share of a first VoIP carrier based on a first number of telephone subscriber numbers associated with the first VoIP carrier with respect to the sample size.