Patent ID: 7957403

Claim:
A telecommunications system, comprising: a gateway positioned to securely control access to a telecommunications network by intercepting one or more requests from a plurality of service provider applications to access the telecommunications network resource to transmit a multimedia message through a network pluq-in, said gateway further including: an application interface to receive the one or more requests from the plurality of service provider applications, wherein the application interface includes a plurality of protocol adapters, each protocol adapter accepting the one or more requests from each service provider application that implements a protocol accepted by that adapter; a policy engine to control access to the telecommunications network resource by applying at least one policy to the one or more requests, said policy being based on one of a plurality of different service level agreements (SLA) that indicate whether a particular one of the plurality of service provider applications is permitted to use the telecommunications network resource; a service Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) to receive the one or more requests from each protocol adapter at the application interface, wherein the PEP requests the network plug-in from a plug-in manager to service the one or more requests; a Policy Decision Point (PDP) that selects, based on the one or more requests, one of the plurality of different service level agreements to make a policy decision on whether to accept the request; wherein upon receiving one of the one or more requests from the plurality of service provider applications, the PEP forwards the request to the PDP which evaluates the request using the selected service level agreement, and informs the PEP of the policy decision; and a resource interface containing the plug-in manager, wherein in response to the policy decision to accept the request, the plug-in manager selects the network plug-in to connect the gateway with the telecommunications network resource to transmit the multimedia message.