Patent ID: 8681622

Claim:
A system for congestion control in a mobile communications network, the system comprising: a monitoring module configured to: monitor message traffic associated with a cell in a communications network, wherein the message traffic includes control plane and user plane messages; determine, based on the message traffic, whether a pre-determined congestion threshold associated with the cell has been crossed; and in response to determining that the congestion threshold associated with the cell has been crossed, generate a cell congestion notification message that includes an identity of one or more subscribers that are contributing to a congestion; and a policy server configured to: receive the cell congestion notification message; generate a policy and charging control (PCC) rule that modifies a policy of the one or more identified subscribers; and communicate the PCC rule to a policy and charging enforcement function (PCEF), wherein the monitoring module is configured to determine whether the congestion threshold has been crossed by computing a congestion indicator based on circuit switched call volume, packet switched data volume, radio bearer establishments, rate of radio bearer releases caused by congestion, total amount of bandwidth allocated for circuit switched calls, total amount of bandwidth allocated for packet switched sessions, total amount of bandwidth de-allocated because of circuit switched call terminations, and total amount of bandwidth de-allocated because of packet switched session terminations.