Telecommunications services apparatus and methods

Abstract

A text message is identified by an SMS router (16) by means of message attributes, such as addressing, address type, message content or signalling fields, as belonging to one of a number of different categories, each category relating to a specific messaging application. The identified messaging application may be executed by a message transformation means (22) which may parse, interpret and transform the message content and addressing in order to generate a response message. The response message may be generated according to a programmable table of exceptions, the exceptions conforming to a syntax permitting matching of a single exception to multiple forms of message construction. The message transformation means (22) and SMS router (16) may return the response message without requiring a routing query to an HLR (28), the response message addressing and routing information being instead derived from the original message.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.