Patent ID: 7937731

Claim:
A method of evaluating callback functionality between a subscriber integrated receiver decoder (IRD) and a satellite broadcast center (SBC) in a subscriber satellite TV network, said IRD including a subscriber conditional access module (CAM) to assure that television programming can be selected and downloaded from a satellite broadcast stream broadcast over a satellite transponder forward channel from the SBC, comprising: connecting the IRD to the satellite transponder forward channel for receiving and decoding the broadcast stream to view selected programming; connecting the IRD to a public communications network back channel for communicating billing information to the SBC through a callback function; placing a test call including a test signal from the IRD to the SBC over the back channel; evaluating the quality of the received test signal at the SBC; returning a callback function valid or invalid signal for the back channel to the subscriber IRD; and placing a call including billing information from the IRD to the SBC over the back channel to execute a callback function.