US 5,027,388 A · Method of selecting the most cost effective cellular service plan provided by cellular telephone resellers to multi-line customers

Abstract

A unique cellular telephone billing system (100) processes call detail records (102) of cellular telephone calls made by users of multi-line customers to produce invoices and reports containing consolidated billing, usage and cost information for the current and other eligible cellular service plans. The call detail records (301 and 302) for each user of a multi-line customer include a unique key identification number (311 and 321) and may include an information format (401 and 402) having variable-length sub-fields (411-415 and 421-423). A candidate file (136) is created from the customer detail pool file (112) by including active user records for multi-line customers and usage data is accumulated in summary records for each user. Eligible cellular service plans are identified for each user in the candidate file and costs for accumulated usage data are estimated under the current and eligible cellular service plans. The estimated costs for the current and eligible cellular service plans may then be compared to determine the most cost effective service plan for each user on the basis of current average usage or rate plan level, account level or market level aggregate average usage. Reports may be generated for each multi-line user illustrating consolidated billing, usage and cost information by sorting on the basis of the corresponding key identification number and information format.

Claims7

Dependent claims

A method of selecting one of a plurality of rate plans for cellular radiotelephone users each having corresponding user records from one or more cellular systems gathered in a billing pool, said billing pool including user records for at least a current billing period and a previous billing period, each user record including a current rate plan and usage information for the current and previous billing periods, said method comprising the steps of:

a) selecting all user records from the billing pool for each cellular radiotelephone user which has non-zero usage information for the current billing period;
b) creating a current usage pool and a previous usage pool by accumulating the usage information in the selected user records for the current billing period and the previous billing period, respectively;
c) creating a summary user record for each cellular radiotelephone user by accumulating the usage information in all corresponding user records;
d) appending current and previous usage pools to each summary user record;
e) calculating costs for each cellular radiotelephone user based upon the accumulated usage information in the corresponding summary user record and at least two of the rate plans;
and
f) selecting for each cellular radiotelephone user the rate plan which has the lowest calculated cost.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method of selecting the most cost effective cellular service plan provided by cellular telephone resellers to multi-line customers

Life of this patent

Method of selecting the most cost effective cellular service plan provided by cellular telephone resellers to multi-line customers

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims7