Reverse rating system for determining duration of a usage transaction

A product comprising:

• a machine readable medium;
• and
• instructions encoded on the medium for execution by a processor in a reverse rating system and which cause the reverse rating system to perform a method comprising:
• processing a reverse message rating to obtain a source identifier associated with a service use transaction;
• determining whether a customer account exists for the source identifier;
• and
• when the customer account exists:
• establishing a resource expenditure threshold for determining a maximal duration of the service use transaction;
• initiating determination of multiple partial service use durations, each for a specific time band;
• maintaining a sum of the multiple partial service use durations;
• monitoring a resource expenditure as the multiple partial service use durations are determined;
• comparing the resource expenditure against the resource expenditure threshold;
• when the resource expenditure exceeds the resource expenditure threshold, returning the sum as an approximation to the maximal duration of the service use transaction;
• and,
• when the resource expenditure does not exceed the resource expenditure threshold and there are no more partial service use durations to determine, returning the sum as the maximal duration of the service use transaction.

A reverse rating system for reverse rating a telecommunications service use transaction, the system comprising:

• a communication interface that receives a reverse rating message for a telecommunications service use transaction;
• memory storing reverse rating parameters;
• and,
• a processor that is operable to:
• process the reverse rating message to extract a source identifier from the message;
• determine whether a customer account exists for the source identifier;
• when no customer account exists, initiate transmission through the interface of a no-account rejection response;
• and
• when the customer account does exist:
• establish a resource expenditure threshold for determining a maximal duration of the telecommunications service use transaction as part of the reverse rating parameters;
• initiate determination of multiple partial service use durations, each for a specific time band;
• maintain a sum of the multiple partial service use durations;
• monitor a resource expenditure threshold as the multiple partial service use durations are determined;
• compare the resource expenditure against the resource expenditure threshold;
• return the sum as an approximation to the maximal duration of the service use transaction when the resource expenditure exceeds the resource expenditure threshold;
• and
• return the sum as the maximal duration of the service use transaction when the resource expenditure does not exceed the resource expenditure threshold and there are no more partial service use durations to determine.