Charging operations carried out in relation to service consumption by users of a communication network reduce signaling overhead and memory or storage requirements by adopting a bifurcated approach to structuring and accessing the data containers used for controlling and tracking service consumption by individual users commonly governed by the same consumption control information. With bifurcation, a parent data container holds the common consumption control information commonly applicable to each user, while an individual child data container for each user holds consumption-tracking information specific to the user. The approach reduces signaling overhead inasmuch as operations involving only the consumption control information need not retrieve or access the child data containers, and the approach reduces overall storage requirements by eliminating redundant inclusion of the common information in the child data containers.

The present disclosure method and device for wireless communications, comprising: operating a first data block set; and transmitting first charging information; a size of data in the first data block set is used to generate the first charging information, the first charging information comprises a first identity (ID) set, and the first ID set comprises a first ID and a second ID; the first ID is a link layer ID; the operating action is receiving, a destination ID field of a MAC header of a MAC PDU used to carry the first data block set comprises at least partial bits in a first ID, when a destination link layer ID list maintained by a node indicated by the second ID comprises the first ID. The present disclosure determines a receiver or a generator of a first data block set, which improves accuracy of charging and enriches charging types of services.

Device and/or line event awareness and smart synchronization is described. In at least one example, a related device of a group of related devices may receive a communication notification representative of a communication event. Such communication notifications may enable event awareness for each of the devices in the group of related devices. In an example, the related device may compare data items (e.g., participants, timestamps, etc.) associated with the communication notification with data items associated with entries stored in a local data store. The entries may correspond to communication events associated with at least the related device. Based at least in part on comparing the data items, the related device may determine whether a new entry associated with the communication notification should be added to a local data store or the communication notification should be disregarded as a duplication.

In general, techniques are described for programming a set of one or more pre-defined rules within the forwarding plane of a packet gateway of a mobile service provider network and caching, within control plane, a group identifier that identifies the set of programmed, pre-defined rules. The control plane may match quality of service (QoS) information of incoming subscriber service requests with the group identifier and respective subsets of the set of programmed, pre-defined rules to rapidly associate service requests with already-programmed PCC rules and thereafter install, to the forwarding plane, subscriber service-specific actions for the PCC rules.

Methods, apparatus, and systems for the process-efficient generation of data records for data communications involving groups or aggregates of user equipment (UE), such as IoT devices, are described. In one illustrative example, for each one of a plurality of UEs associated with a group or aggregation identifier (ID), a request which includes data indicative of a network resource usage event of the UE is received and the data are stored in association with the group or aggregation ID. In response to identifying a predetermined condition, the data indicative of the network resource usage events associated with the group or aggregation ID are aggregated, and a request for generating a data record based on the aggregated data is sent to a data function for generating the data record. The generated data record (e.g. a CDR) may be stored for subsequent retrieval for reporting, analysis, network/communications management, or billing.

The embodiments herein relate to a method performed by a Control Plane (CP) function for handling a credit pool comprising granted service units to be used by multiple services. The multiple services are grouped in at least one first Rating Group (RG). The CP function creates an individual Usage Reporting Rule (URR) for each of the at least one first RG. Each individual URR comprises a first credit pool threshold. The CP function provides the individual URRs to a User Plane (UP) function. The CP function creates a Usage Reporting Rule for the Credit Pool (URR CRPL). The URR CRPL comprises instructions to the UP function to aggregate service unit usage for all individual URRs for all first RGs. The URR CRPL further comprises the first credit pool threshold. The CP function provides the URR CRPL to the UP function.

A network device executes an account management function that pre-authorizes network service unit consumption by multiple subscribers that are members of a same, shared network service account. The account management function receives, from multiple charging systems distributed within the network, network unit consumption charges associated with each of the multiple subscribers, where the network device is centrally located within a network relative to multiple locations associated with the plurality of charging systems. The account management function updates a consumption counter for the same, shared network service account based on the network unit consumption charges associated with the multiple subscribers received from the multiple charging systems distributed within the network.

Methods and systems for sharing data usage by a plurality of SIM cards at a plurality of network devices are disclosed. Each of the plurality of network devices is capable of housing at least one SIM card from the plurality of SIM cards. The method comprises the steps of determining the total data usage allowance. A remaining total data usage allowance is determined by either retrieving it from a carrier server or by subtracting aggregated data usage information from the total data usage allowance. The method further comprises restricting use of one or more of the plurality of SIM cards when the remaining total data usage allowance is below a first threshold until the remaining total data usage allowance is above the first threshold. The total data usage allowance is changed to a first value periodically or according to an administrator's instruction.

A processing system deployed in a telecommunication network may obtain data records including data associated with subscribers, cluster the subscribers into a plurality of clusters in accordance with the data, identify a first set of subscribers enrolled in automated clearing house (ACH) payment agreements, and identify a second set of subscribers not enrolled in ACH payment agreements, calculate distance measures for the second set of subscribers, where for each respective subscriber of the second set of subscribers, the distance measures include a respective distance measure of the respective subscriber to a feature centroid for a subset of the first set of subscribers in a same cluster as the respective subscriber, select a subset of the second set of subscribers based upon the plurality of distance measures for receiving an offer in an ACH payment agreement, and present communications to the subset of the second set of subscribers with the offer.

A system, method and computer readable storage medium are disclosed to provide dynamic network resource management in a telecommunications network where at least a portion of the network resources are located at an edge of the telecommunications network. The capacity available, the aggregate demand of resources at a given time, and the cost of the network resource demanded as well as each customers upper price limit may be considered and adjusted in real-time by different network resource allocation models.