A lightweight brokering system for content/service charging in a cellular network centric business model

Abstract

Cellular operators offer voice services for years and own a solid amount of users with a certain authority on running cellular business. Recently, various fascinated value added contents and services are emerging in the post-voice era. To extend the business and leverage the exiting operation and maintenance systems, operators strive to become a trusty broker that aggregates a variety of valued added services provided by lots of third-party service/content providers as well as a payment agency that collects the service/content fees into a unified bill for users. In the past, little studies had ever clearly and deeply revealed for how to practically substantiate a lightweight system for connecting users, cellular operators and content/service providers by highly exploiting the mature cellular environment to achieve a triple-win situation. In this article, we elaborate a well-constructed A.A.A. brokering system – A 4BS sitting between the content/service providers and users to link the value chain in such a triple-play game. A 4BS generalizes certain basic mechanisms that govern authentication, authorization, advice-of-charge issuing, accounting, billing and settlement. Through this tried-and-true system, content/service providers can focus on service creation without much attention to the end-user billing. Meanwhile, users can be charged on a transaction basis with an instant expenditure notification and have a one-stop payment in the existing cellular bill.