Billing system for communications services involving telephony and instant communications

#The present invention relates to communications systems and methods and more particularly to facilitating the establishment of communications among users of communications systems.

#A communications system serves to transport information among users or among points served by the system. One way to maximize the usefulness of a communications system is to facilitate the establishment of communications among users of the system. As one party seeks to communicate with another party, this may involve assisting in obtaining contact information for a given user or destination, or providing a variety of methods by which communication may be arranged.

#For example, in a telephone network, a large proportion of calls are completed by direct dialing from one telephone to another. However, further effectiveness is achieved by the offering of interactive operator services or “enhanced services” to facilitate communications among parties. In some cases, enhanced services may be provided to help a caller by locating a telephone number for a called party or by connecting the caller to the called party. An enhanced service may also allow a caller to exercise a broad range of billing arrangements, such as) calling card billing, billing to subscriber account numbers and collect calling.

#The present invention is illustrated by way of example, and not by way of limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings and in which like reference numerals refer to similar elements and in which:

#FIG. 1 depicts a communication network in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

#FIGS. 2A and 2B together depict a call-flow diagram of a presence-based call completion session with calling party termination in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

#Systems, methods and computer-implemented processes for call processing are described. In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. It is apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details or with an alternative equivalent arrangement. In other instances, well-known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present invention.

#The present invention addresses the need to increase the flexibility and ease with which parties may establish communications. As will now be described using several exemplary embodiments, the present invention achieves advantages in establishing communications despite the increased use of multiple, and often disparate, modes of communication such as telephony and instant messaging.

#An alternative form of communications popularized in recent years is messaging communications. Messaging communications are generally characterized by a communicating party determining a finite amount of information to be sent as a message. Messaging communications typically involve one or more discrete messages sent by a party to one or more other parties. A message may comprise text, data or digitized audio or video information, for example, or even combinations of these. Electronic mail (e-mail) and text paging are forms of messaging communications.