Patent ID: 7603102

Claim:
A banded billing method for data communication services comprising: maintaining in data storage a banded-pricing schedule that divides a continuum of increments of data into a series of contiguous, mutually-exclusive increment-ranges and that specifies for each increment-range a respective cost; determining a number of increments of data communicated by a given subscriber during a given period; querying the banded-pricing schedule to determine which increment-range the number of increments falls into, and to determine the cost specified by the banded-pricing schedule for that increment-range; and billing the determined cost to the given subscriber, for data communication service during the given period wherein the series of increment-ranges begins with a first increment-range of 0 to P increments, and then continues with increment-ranges R k , each extending from {P+(k−1)(Q)+1} increments to {P+(k)(Q)} increments, wherein k=1, 2, 3, . . . , N, and wherein Q is a number of increments.