| 摘要 |
Subscribers to a communications infrastructure, such as a GPRS network (17), can pre-pay for use of metered resources (18, 19, 37, 50, 54) of the infrastructure. When a pre-payment subscriber joins the network, the current credit amount for the subscriber is distributed as credit values between user-specific virtual purses (55-59) each associated with a respective metered resource. Upon use of a metered resource by the subscriber, the credit value held in the associated purse is correspondingly reduced, with use of the resource being dependent on the purse being in credit. The virtual purses are preferably electronically distributed to be close by the metered resources to which they relate whereby to reduce network billing traffic. When the subscriber leaves the network, the remaining credit values are consolidated from the purses. |
