Patent ID: 8503977

Claim:
A billing system for distributing information by a broadcast service, comprising: mobile terminals; an information distribution apparatus; and a billing-information generation apparatus, wherein said mobile terminals, said information distribution apparatus, and said billing-information generation apparatus are connected to one another via a network, said information distribution apparatus comprises: a data creation unit which creates data to be simultaneously distributed and further adds to said data an identifier, which indicates that said data is to be distributed by the broadcast service, and adds billing class information in accordance with a data amount; and a transmission/reception unit for transmitting said data, to which said identifier has been added, and to which said billing class information has been added, to said mobile terminal, wherein said mobile terminal comprises: a transmission/reception unit for receiving the data transmitted from said information distribution apparatus and for transmitting a reception confirmation message to said billing-information generation apparatus and said information distribution apparatus; and a reception-confirmation-message creation unit for creating said reception confirmation message if it is determined from said identifier added to said received data that said received data has been distributed by the broadcast service, and for further adding thereto the identifier and billing class information which have been added to said data, and wherein said billing-information generation apparatus comprises: a billing-information generation unit for generating billing information based on the billing class information added to the said reception confirmation message, if it is determined from said identifier added to the reception confirmation message transmitted from said mobile terminal that said received data has been distributed by the broadcast service, wherein said mobile terminal determines said received data as being multicast data of the broadcast service or other data, and sends the reception confirmation message on which basis billing is performed only when said mobile terminal determines that said received data is said multicast data of the broadcast service and not said other data, such that said reception confirmation message is not sent by said mobile terminal when said mobile terminal determines that said received data is said other data and not said multicast data of the broadcast service, said reception confirmation message is added with load state information of a base station through which said data is passed while being transmitted from said information distribution apparatus to said mobile terminal, and the transmission/reception unit provided in said mobile terminal transmits said reception confirmation message after being in a temporary standby state in response to said load state information.