There is provided mechanisms for granting network resources for maintaining a communication session for a subscriber in a network. A method is performed by a CTF node. The method includes obtaining, from a gateway in the network, a request for network resources for maintaining the communication session for the subscriber, and requesting, from an OCF node and in response thereto, credit units corresponding to the network resources. The method includes obtaining a grant of the credit units as well as an advance credit indication of additional credit units for the communication session from the OCF node. The method further includes storing the advance credit indication for the communication session and providing, to the gateway, a grant for the network resources for maintaining the communication session in accordance with the obtained grant.

A method for cellular network outage detection including monitoring error rates associated with a network node of a cellular network for a first predetermined time period. The method includes determining a first baseline error rate for the network node based on the plurality of first error rates for the first predetermined time period, and determining a first threshold error rate for the network node based on the first baseline error rate for the network node. The method includes monitoring a plurality of second error rates associated with the network node for a time period subsequent the first predetermined time period, and detecting an excessive error rate of the plurality of second error rates associated with the network node, where the excessive error rate exceeding the first threshold error rate. The method includes, in response to detecting the excessive error rate, automatically executing a predetermined override rule.

A charging processing method includes: when a charging processing device for a user service is unavailable, storing charging data of the user service during the failure period, where the charging data includes charging data that is not sent or charging data that is not processed; and after it is determined that a charging processing device for the user service transitioned from “unavailable” to “available”, sending a charging request message that includes the charging data during the failure period to the available charging processing device, so that the available charging processing device performs charging processing on the charging data before a charging processing device transitioned to “available”. In this method, when the charging processing device or a network is faulty, interruption of the user service can be avoided, and a loss caused for an operator can be avoided.

Methods, computer-readable media and devices are disclosed for selecting a plurality of network devices to perform a plurality of tasks in accordance with a set of functional network analytics instructions. For example, a processor deployed in a telecommunication network may receive a set of functional network analytics instructions compiled from a set of instructions in accordance with a functional network analytics platform application programming interface. The processor may further, in accordance with the set of functional network analytics instructions, select a plurality of network devices to perform a plurality of tasks, send the plurality of tasks to the plurality of network devices, receive control plane data from the plurality of network devices, correlate the control plane data in accordance with operations defined in the set of functional network analytics instructions to create resulting data, and forward the resulting data to at least one recipient device.

A method for billing in a wireless communication system, according to an embodiment, includes: transmitting billing data to an upper entity; determining whether the billing data has been normally transmitted; and executing a supplementary operation based on a result of the determining.

In a 5.sup.th-Generation (5G) cellular communication network, charging customers for data usage is performed by a network function referred to as a charging function (CHF). A session management function (SMF) of the network repeatedly sends update requests to reserve additional data for a data session. If the CHF is not available and the SMF does not receive a response to an update message, the SMF continues to assign data for the data session, even though it has not received authorization to do so from the CHF. When the CHF becomes available, the SMF sends a request to start a second data session to continue the data connection that was previously supported by the original data session. This request specifies the amount of data that was used in the original data session without being confirmed by the CHF, allowing the CHF to account for this data usage.

In one example, a session management function entity is configured to obtain an indication of a backup resource usage quota associated with a rating group of a user session for a user equipment configured to communicate via a mobile core network. The rating group is subject to online charging. The session management function entity determines that a charging function entity configured to provide an indication of a primary resource usage quota associated with the rating group is unreachable. In response to determining that the charging function entity is unreachable, the session management function entity allocates the backup resource usage quota associated with the rating group while the charging function entity is unreachable.

A network element of an Internet Protocol multimedia subsystem buffers network resource usage information in the cloud. After generating network resource usage information based on an observation of network resource usage, the network element transmits the network resource usage information to a cloud-based storage service for buffering. Once a network resource usage collection function is available, the network element retrieves the network resource usage information from the cloud-based storage service and transmits it to a charging collection function for generation of call detail records.

Methods, computer-readable media and devices are disclosed for selecting a plurality of network devices to perform a plurality of tasks in accordance with a set of functional network analytics instructions. For example, a processor deployed in a telecommunication network may receive a set of functional network analytics instructions compiled from a set of instructions in accordance with a functional network analytics platform application programming interface. The processor may further, in accordance with the set of functional network analytics instructions, select a plurality of network devices to perform a plurality of tasks, send the plurality of tasks to the plurality of network devices, receive control plane data from the plurality of network devices, correlate the control plane data in accordance with operations defined in the set of functional network analytics instructions to create resulting data, and forward the resulting data to at least one recipient device.

In one embodiment, a method includes identifying a mobile service provider network (SPN) and a geographic location of an online social network user and accessing a service-provider table associated with the identified mobile SPN and with the geographic location. The service-provider table indexes a reliability score and a sampling amount for multiple messaging-service providers in the geographic location. The method further determines, based on the service-provider table, whether any of the messaging-service providers has a sampling amount below a threshold sampling amount and sends messaging traffic via the determined messaging-service provider until the sampling amount is greater than or equal to the threshold sampling amount. The messaging traffic is used to update the reliability score for the messaging-service provider. The method further includes selecting a messaging-service provider based on the updated reliability scores of the messaging-service providers and sending a message to the user via the selected messaging service-provider.