| 摘要 |
The teachings herein disclose methods and apparatuses for automatically binding external identifiers to service provider network identifiers. The external identifiers are allocated by an access network for use by a service provider network in identifying given wireless devices to the access network, where the service provider network is external to the access network. The service provider network identifiers are used to identify those same wireless devices within the service provider network, with respect to one or more services. The binding takes place, in one case, following the reading of an external identifier and a service provider network from a notification received from the access network at a node of the service provider network, and in another case, following reception of information indicating external identifiers, each being based on a service provider network identifier, and processing of each external identifier to obtain the corresponding service provider network identifiers. The binding thus enables the service provider network to trigger communications with a targeted wireless device via the access network, by using the external identifier that is bound to the service provider network identifier of the targeted device, and sending trigger signaling to the access network that identifies the targeted wireless device via the external identifier. |
