Abstract:
This invention relates to a feature for controlling resellers of telecommunications services. A service provider may freeze the accounts, and therefore service, for all customers of a reseller if that reseller is behind on payments to the service provider. In one preferred embodiment, all customers of a reseller are identified with a reseller identification field in the customer&#39;s data stored by the service provider. When the service provider issues a freeze order, the account records for all customers of the reseller, identified by the reseller identification stored for each customer, are set into a frozen state wherein these customers cannot initiate or receive calls; after the frozen state is removed, the various promotions allotted to each customer are reinstated. Advantageously, the threat of freezing service to the customers of the reseller is a potent weapon to force the reseller to pay the service provider.

Description:
TECHNICAL FIELD 
     This invention relates to the provision of prepaid service in mobile virtual network operations. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Corporations with well known brand names have a major advantage in the selling of services. One example of the use of this type of advantage is in mobile virtual network operations. A company such as Walmart while having no basic interest in establishing the infrastructure of a mobile telecommunications network would still like to take advantage of the power of its brand to sell mobile telecommunications services. 
     In one popular mobile virtual network operation business model, the mobile network operator (service provider) teams with a reseller. The reseller approaches customers or is approached by the customers to obtain mobile telecommunications service. 
     The reseller then notifies the service provider of the identity of the customer and for prepaid customers the type of prepaid arrangement requested by the customer. In prepaid services a customer pays a service provider a fee and the service provider then provides service charging the customer against the pre-provided fee. The end users—wireless prepaid subscribers—pay the reseller for the services. The reseller pays the service provider for wireless infrastructure and customer account management. The reseller owns a customer care center (help desk) which uses software provided by the service provider. When the subscriber calls the help desk, the reseller representative will use the customer care system software to obtain the needed information and update the account information. As the customer makes calls, the charges for the calls are subtracted from a record of the prepaid fee until the customer has exhausted the fee and is asked to provide an additional fee for more service. The fee is usually paid to the reseller through a credit or debit card arrangement, cash, or through some kind of bank transfer arrangement. 
     The fee is provided to the reseller and the service provider accumulates agreed upon charges against the reseller. Periodically, or according to some other arrangement, the reseller pays the service provider for the services provided. 
     Since it is the reseller who collects money from the customers and since it is the service provider who collects money from the reseller, a problem of the prior art is that there is no satisfactory arrangement to punish a reseller who does not pay the service provider. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The above problem is solved and an advance is made over the teachings of the prior art in accordance with Applicant&#39;s invention wherein a service provider can stop the provision of service to customers of a reseller by cutting off outgoing, incoming, or both kinds of services to the customers of the reseller in response to a request from the service provider; a data block for each customer of the reseller is initialized to a freeze state which will block all calls from and/or to that customer. 
     In accordance with one feature of the invention, service can also be denied to the postpaid customers of the reseller. 
     In accordance with one aspect of Applicant&#39;s invention, there is in addition to a freeze request and freeze state, an unfreeze request and a corresponding unfreeze (i.e., normal) state. The unfreeze state is invoked in response to a request from the service provider in response to being paid or receiving some satisfactory explanation and/or guarantee that the service provider will be paid. 
     In accordance with one preferred embodiment, the customers are informed when a freeze state is invoked and/or when the customers attempt to make an outgoing call. For prepaid service which is time limited or which includes a promotion such as free calls for a limited period of time, the time for customers of resellers who have been frozen out of service for a freeze period is incremented by the freeze period so that these customers do not lose any paid for time or any promotional benefits. 
     In accordance with another feature of Applicant&#39;s invention, when the freeze is invoked (normally during a period of light traffic), customers who are already on a call are allowed to finish that call provided that their account balance remains positive. They are then frozen when they complete that call. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating the configuration of reseller provided mobile virtual network operations; 
         FIG. 2  illustrates the data maintained for individual customers of a reseller and for the reseller; and 
         FIGS. 3-6  are flow diagrams illustrating the operation of Applicant&#39;s invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating the configurations of Applicant&#39;s invention. Three resellers  1 ,  6 , and  11  all deal with a billing system  30 . The core of the billing system is a server, such as Lucent&#39;s SurePay™ Server  38 . Resellers  1 ,  6 , and  11  have customer service representatives  3 ,  8 , and  13  respectively. These customer service representatives communicate with a customer care system  32  and a recharge management system  36 . The recharge management system obtains information about a customer&#39;s recharging data provided to the customer service representative. The recharge management system and the customer care system communicate with the charging server  38 . 
     The charging server  38  communicates with mobile network  20  which includes customer data system  22 ; this system stores the data for all customer segments of reseller  6 . In alternative embodiments, the customer data system  22  is integrated into charging server  38 , or is a stand-alone system not connected to customer segment  45 . Similar units store data for customer segments  41  related to reseller  1  and customer segments  49  relating to customers of reseller  11 . 
       FIG. 2  is a diagram of pertinent data layouts associated with this invention. Block  201  is a customer data block describing the services of a customer. In particular, and with respect to this invention, block  201  has been enhanced from the teachings of the prior art by the addition of a field  203  for storing the reseller&#39;s identification. Block  205  contains promotion data for the customer, such as special rates for special times, and the interval for which the promotion is active. It also contains a subscriber information module (SIM) table  207  that has basic customer information such as the directory number, mobile identification number, account identifier, class of service, currency and language label, primary and secondary balance, (customers may have more than one account), time last recharged, personal identification number (PIN) and call forwarding information. A call forwarding number for use when a customer is in the freeze state is stored in location  209 . 
     Block  211  contains data for the reseller. Field  213  stores the freeze time for that reseller and field  215  is a pointer to a block  217  for storing information about subscriber calls in progress. The block which contains this subscriber call in progress information contains a plurality of entries  219 , . . . ,  221  for all calls in progress at the time that the freeze was invoked. For each call in progress, a caller identification is stored and the most recent time that this caller was checked to see if the caller had completed the call in progress at the time of the freeze had been completed. When the call is completed, this entry is deleted from the file of calls in progress. When the subscriber is frozen, the subscriber lifecycle data which stores promotion data for the customer at the frozen time should be also be preserved for future recovery. For example, in the SurePay system, dynamic data of a subscriber stored in the customer data block  201  has fields, such as phone number, class of service, etc. The freeze state is an existing field in SurePay. 
       FIG. 3  is a flow diagram illustrating the operations of freezing service to the customers of a reseller. An administration user of the service provider issues a command to freeze subscribers belonging to the reseller whose subscribers are to be frozen (action block  301 ). The audit tests (test  303 ) whether a subscriber is served by the identified reseller by examining the reseller identification field  203  ( FIG. 2 ). If the subscriber is not served by the identified reseller, the audit tests the next subscriber (action block  305 ). If the subscriber is served by the identified reseller, test  307  checks whether the subscriber is on a call at this time. If so, the audit will skip the subscriber, set a rescreen time and go on to the next subscriber (action block  309 ). If the subscriber is served by the identified reseller and is not on a call, the audit stops the clock of the life cycle of the subscriber account, saves all promotion data for the account and stops monthly/recurring charges for such frozen accounts (action block  311 ). The audit also sets the subscriber SIM (Subscriber Information Module) table to a frozen state (action block  313 ). A call forwarding number for forwarding incoming calls while the subscriber is in the frozen state, is also set in field  209  of the subscriber data block  201  (action block  315 ). The audit will also log all freezing activities with subscriber activity and freezing information (action block  317 ), so that there is data for the service provider to examine the execution of freezing. The audit continues until all subscribers, including those on calls at the time of the freeze, have been audited. The customers of the reseller being frozen are notified either at the time of the freeze or when they attempt to make a call. (See discussion of  FIG. 6 .) 
     During the freeze period, all activities against this account are suspended. For any incoming and outgoing calls, charging server  38  will check to see if the customer&#39;s account is frozen and if it is frozen the call is blocked. Incoming calls may be forwarded to the call forwarding number specified in the called customer&#39;s data block in order to notify the caller of the present situation. Alternatively, only incoming calls may be allowed, and even these may be limited in time, or may be blocked after lapse of a predetermined interval. 
       FIG. 4  is a flow diagram illustrating the operations performed during an unfreezing. An administration user of the service provider issues a command to unfreeze subscribers belonging to the reseller (action block  401 ). The audit tests whether a subscriber is served by the identified reseller (test  403 ). If not, the audit goes to the next subscriber (action block  405 ). For subscribers served by the identified reseller, the audit will remove the frozen flag indicator in the subscriber SIM table and set the freezing time stamp to null (action block  407 ). The life cycle data is reinstalled according to the data reserved at the freeze time and according to the present time (action block  409 ). The audit resumes all promotions provided to this account (action block  411 ). The audit restarts monthly/recurring charges for the account and adjusts the charge to account for the applicable freeze period (action block  413 ). The audit removes freezing call forwarding and announcement numbers stored at the time of the freeze (action block  415 ). Finally, the audit will log the unfreezing activities with subscriber and unfreezing data (action block  417 ) to allow the service provider and reseller to examine. The charging server will notify a notification entity to send an announcement to the customer for the unfreezing. The announcement could be a voice call, SMS (Short Message Service) or email. 
     As a result of the above operations, customers of a reseller may have their service frozen in response to a first command from an administrator of the service provider and unfrozen in response to a second command from the service provider. Advantageously, this kind of arrangement provides the type of meaningful threat which a service provider needs to ensure that resellers continue to pay. 
       FIG. 5  is a flow diagram illustrating actions performed when an incoming call is received to a customer in the freeze state. An incoming call is received (action block  501 ). The call is routed to an announcement (action block  503 ) or to some other number specified in call forwarding number field  209  ( FIG. 2 ). The announcement indicates the frozen state of the called party and may also provide a telephone number for reaching a service desk of the reseller. Calls from and to the reseller service desk will not be blocked when the reseller is placed in the frozen state. Calls from a service desk of the service provider to a customer in the frozen state will not be blocked, so that emergencies can be served. 
       FIG. 6  is a flow diagram illustrating the actions performed when a customer in the frozen state attempts to make a call (action block  601 ). The system tests whether the call is to a reseller service desk (test  603 ). If the customer is not calling the service desk, the customer is connected to an announcement (action block  605 ). If the customer is calling the service desk, he/she is connected to the reseller&#39;s service desk. 
     In addition, it is necessary to notify all affected customers when service is frozen or unfrozen. This can be done via an announcement or e-mail at the time of the freeze or unfreeze, and/or by connecting a frozen customer to an announcement when he/she attempts to make a call. 
     For postpaid customers of the reseller, the principles of this invention are also applicable. For such customers, it is important that the freeze interval be recorded so that these customers are not charged for the interval when they have no service. The freeze interval can be recorded in the reseller data block, and can be read when bills are being prepared. 
     Since it is in the interest of the service provider to continue to obtain revenue during freeze periods, the customers of the service provider can be permitted to call reseller customers when the reseller&#39;s service is frozen. 
     In the preferred embodiment of Applicant&#39;s invention, customers served by a particular reseller, or by a reseller group treated as one entity for the purposes of freezing customers, are identified in a field of the customer&#39;s data block. Alternatively, customers can be identified by being on a stored table of customers served by the reseller; a range of directory numbers or Internet Protocol (IP) addresses; a domain name (e.g., Walmart.com or apple.com); or any other recognizable grouping for the customers of a particular reseller. Once a customer has been identified as being served by a reseller whose customers are being frozen or unfrozen, the actions to freeze or unfreeze an individual customer account can be performed. The actions taken on incoming or outgoing calls are controlled by the freeze state indicator in the customer data block. 
     The above description is of one preferred embodiment of Applicant&#39;s invention.