Methods, systems, and computer program products for providing telecommunications services between a session initiation protocol (SIP) network and a signaling system 7 (SS7) network

A session initiation protocol (SIP) and SS7 gateway comprising:

• (a) a SIP interface for receiving a SIP INVITE message from a SIP network and relating to call from a SIP proxy server, the SIP INVITE message including a called party number stored in a To field of the SIP INVITE message;
• (b) an interworking unit for determining a type of telecommunications service required for the call based on the called party number from the SIP message and for requesting a query based on the identified service type, wherein the interworking unit is adapted to determine whether a telecommunications service is required for the call, and, in response to determining that a telecommunications service is required for the call, the interworking unit is adapted to determine the service type based on the INVITE message without requiring an extension header identifying the service type to be present in the INVITE message, and wherein determining a type of telecommunications service required for the call includes one of:
• determining the type of telecommunications service by comparing the called party number to a database of called party number maintained by the SIP and SS7 gateway that correlates different called party numbers with a plurality of different service types;
• and
• (c) a database interface for receiving the request and for formulating an SS7 query to a database in an SS7 network and obtaining a response to the query, wherein the interworking unit is adapted to extract data from the response and use the data to facilitate completion of the call, wherein the SIP network and the SS7 network are incompatible with each other because the SIP network and the SS7 network use different communications protocols, wherein using the data extracted from the response to facilitate completion of the call includes performing a second query to the SS7 network using the data from the response and receiving a response to the second query;
• wherein using the data extracted from the response to facilitate completion of the call includes forwarding the data to the originating SIP proxy.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium encoded with computer executable instructions that when executed by the processor of a computer control the computer to perform steps comprising:

• at a session initiation protocol ISIPI and SS7 gateway:
• (a) receiving a SIP INVITE message from a SIP network and relating to a call from an originating SIP proxy server, the SIP INVITE message including a called party number stored in a To field of the SIP INVITE message, wherein receiving a SIP INVITE message includes receiving a SIP INVITE message without any extension headers identifying the type of service required for the call, and, in response to receiving the INVITE message, determining whether a telecommunications service is required and, in response to determining that a telecommunications service is required:
• (b) determining, based on the called party number from the SIP message, a type of telecommunications service required for the call, wherein determining a type of telecommunications service required for the call includes
• determining the type of telecommunications service by comparing the called party number to a database of called party number maintained by the SIP and SS7 gateway that correlates different called party numbers with a plurality of different service types;
• (c) formulating an SS7 query to a database in an SS7 network based on the identified type of service for the call;
• (d) receiving a response from the database to the query;
• and
• (e) extracting data from the response and using the data to facilitate completion of the call, wherein the SIP network and the SS7 network are incompatible with each other because the SIP network and the SS7 network use different communications protocols, wherein using the data extracted from the response to facilitate completion of the call includes performing a second query to the SS7 network using the data from the response and receiving a response to the second query;
• wherein using the data extracted from the response to facilitate completion of the call includes forwarding the data to the originating SIP proxy.