Patent ID: 8005726

Claim:
A service provider hosted method of analyzing rate plans for communication services, comprising: obtaining rate structures from a plurality of sources; storing the rate structures in a rate plan database; electronically obtaining user input data from a user; deriving, by a computer processor, a usage pattern from usage data for a consumer of communication services by determining, based on the user input data, whether a historical usage database reflecting prior use of communication services by the consumer is available, and based on the determination that the historical usage database reflecting the prior use of communication services is available, selecting, by the computer processor, the usage data from the historical usage database, and based on the determination that the historical usage database reflecting the prior use of communication services is not available, obtaining additional input data from the user and determining the usage data based on the additional input data; determining, by the computer processor, a set of proposed rate plans for the consumer based on the usage pattern; determining a type of the user; based on the determination that the user is a consumer type, filtering out from the set of proposed rate plans, by the computer processor, a rate plan from a competitor of the service provider, and presenting the filtered proposed rate plans to the user; and based on the determination that the user is a representative of the service provider, presenting the set of proposed rate plans without filtering out a rate plan from a competitor of the service provider.