Methods and systems for providing telephony services and enforcing policies in a communication network

Abstract

In certain embodiments, the present disclosure comprises a system and method for providing feature services in a multimedia communication environment. The system and method comprise comparing signaling messages with control data to identify one or more service enablers and application servers that are responsive to the signaling message. Each responsive service enabler is invoked in accordance with an associated policy hook. In certain other embodiments, a system for enforcing policy in a communication network includes a policy server which is operable to receive a request to invoke an application, receive a policy profile for a network user, and decide a proper allocation of network users based on the policy profile, the application, and available network resources. The policy server is further operable to communicate with a non-SIP application. The system also includes a network resource manager operably associated with the policy server and operable to monitor available network in the resources in the communication network. In addition, the network resource manager is functional to allocate network resource amongst a plurality of network users. The system also contains an application control point which is operably associated with the policy server and operable to communicate with a SIP application. The system is operable to use policy peering between the home and visited network to enable user-specific policies to be enforced while roaming.

Description

technical field [0001] The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly to systems and methods for providing multimedia services and enforcing policies in communication networks. Background technique [0002] In today's cellular architecture, introducing new services is difficult and expensive. Much of the difficulty and expense is attributable to the monolithic architecture of the switching center, which does not allow the introduction of services from outside the switch itself. [0003] The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture addresses these limitations to some extent. According to current standards, the IMS architecture provides features to users through external application servers. Initial Filter Criteria (iFC) defines a set of Service Point Triggers (Service PointTrigger, SPT) to determine whether a request should call a specific application server. [0004] However, the IMS architecture provides only limited capabiliti...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

While the IMS architecture has many benefits, it currently only supports SIP-enabled devices

Therefore, it cannot provide roaming policy support for many legacy devices and applications that do not utilize SIP

Additionally, the scope of policy control provided by the system is limited by quality of service (QoS) and billing

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