Real-time charging in mobile environment

Charging the services offered by the packet based UMTS environment is much more complex, than it is in the circuit based GSM systems. The situation is even more complicated, as services can be easily developed using standard APIs and can be offered by third party providers. Moreover, pre-paid users need a real-time approach for charging and billing, which limits the admissible charging solutions. In our study we give a short survey of the motivations for developing the UMTS system, we summarize the legal and technical difficulties, and we introduce our new concept which should ease the majority of the problems and lighten the network overhead caused by the real-time charging solution presented in the corresponding technical reports.