Prepaid services accounts with multi-user customers and individualized quotas
AssigneeVerizon Patent and Licensing Inc.
InventorsGregory L. Mumford, Jon E. Abel, David A. Fitzgerald, Radhika Gunasekar, Anna Marie Appleby, John M. Leslein
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Prepaid services include a multi-user prepaid services account as well as a prepaid balance associated with the account. A plurality of user records associated with the account each includes a quota. A service monitoring component may be configured to repeatedly draw down the prepaid balance by providing one or more allocations of the prepaid balance during a service period to a user associated with a respective user record.
Claims27
A system, comprising:
- a multi-user account;
- a balance associated with the account;
- a plurality of user records associated with the account, where each user record includes a quota;
- a service monitoring component to repeatedly draw down the balance by providing one or more allocations of the balance during a service period to a user associated with a respective user record;
- and
- an account balance recharge component to recharge the balance to a predetermined level, and
- where the service-monitoring component is further to accept a recharge preference that defines a minimum level of the balance that will trigger the balance recharge component to recharge the account balance.
A method, implemented by at least one non-transitory device, the method comprising:
- providing a multi-user account;
- associating a balance with the account;
- associating a plurality of user records with the account, where each user record includes a quota;
- repeatedly drawing down the balance by providing one or more allocations of the balance during a service period to a user associated with a respective user record;
- recharging the account balance to a predetermined level;
- and
- accepting a recharge preference that defines a minimum level of the account balance that will trigger the recharging.
A non-transitory memory device comprising:
- one or more instructions to provide a multi-user account;
- one or more instructions to associate a balance with the account;
- one or more instructions to associate a plurality of user records with the account, where each user record includes a quota;
- one or more instructions to repeatedly draw down the balance by providing one or more allocations of the balance during a service period to a user associated with a respective user record;
- one or more instructions to recharge the account balance to a predetermined level;
- and
- one or more instructions to accept a recharge preference that defines a minimum level of the account balance that will trigger the recharging.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.