Patent ID: 8370912

Claim:
A method of provisioning a service in a communications network between a user terminal and an application server, said method comprising an initial subscription request phase followed by a subsequent service request phase, the subscription request phase comprising: (i) receiving a subscription request for the service at the application server, said subscription request including a subscriber identity associated with the user terminal; (ii) initiating a configuration dialogue between the application server and the user terminal to configure an application on the user terminal, wherein the application server sends an identity number to the user terminal and the identity number is a random number generated by the application server; (iii) storing at the user terminal the identity number and sending from the user terminal to the application server the identity number and a serial number associated with the user terminal; (iv) in response to said sending the serial number with the corresponding identity number in step (iii), storing at the application server the serial number with the corresponding identity number sent by the user terminal in step (iii); and wherein the subsequent service request phase comprises: (v) sending a request for the service from the user terminal to the application server using the configured application, said service request including the identity number and the serial number stored at the user terminal; (vi) comparing by the application server the identity number and serial number sent by the user terminal from step (v) and comparing said numbers with the corresponding numbers stored at the application server, and if the number match, then providing the requested service to the user terminal.