Patent ID: 7603103

Claim:
A banded billing method for communication service comprising: maintaining in data storage a banded-pricing schedule that divides a continuum of increments of communication service 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 communication service attributable to 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; generating for the given subscriber an invoice that depicts the series of increment-ranges and that includes at the depicted series a visual marker pointing out the determined increment-range in the series, 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.