Patent ID: 7720960

Claim:
A method implemented by a service selection gateway for authorizing prepaid mobile network services, the method comprising the steps of: receiving from a GPRS Gateway Support Node (GGSN) a first request to authenticate a mobile station for activating the mobile station's Packet Data Protocol (PDP) context; forwarding to an authentication server the request to authenticate the mobile station; receiving a first response to the request from the authentication server; in response to receiving the first response, preparing and sending a second response to the GGSN, wherein the second response comprises a set of attributes identified in the first request from the GGSN; receiving a second request for a prepaid network service from the mobile station; requesting the authentication server to provide a prepaid quota value associated with the prepaid network service and the mobile station; receiving the prepaid quota value from the authentication server; forwarding network traffic associated with the prepaid network service from the mobile station to a service provider only when the prepaid quota value is nonzero; monitoring traffic communicated by the mobile station for the prepaid network service associated with the quota value; determining that the traffic is discontinued or inactive; returning an unused portion of the quota value to the authentication server; allowing the mobile station to concurrently access a plurality of different services using the mobile station's PDP; and allotting the unused portion of the quota value to a plurality of different concurrent connections of the mobile station that are respectively associated with the plurality of different services concurrently accessed by the mobile station; wherein a router performs all the preceding steps.