Importance

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Abstract

The herein disclosed invention stimulates competition between service providers for traffic and facilitates a service provider's and a consumer's ability to make economic choices between competing telecommunication carriers. In this method and system, telecommunication switches route calls in accordance with economic incentives resulting from a bidding process between participating telecommunication carriers (Carriers), administered by a bidding service provider through operation of a central processor, at computer referred to as a bidding moderator (Moderator). The technology required to facilitate forward delivery transactions, in which a buyer and seller agree to the terms of a transaction today but schedule actual delivery for a future time, would be helpful to end users, resellers and Carriers. The Moderator can facilitate such transactions by processing requests for end users or resellers (as buyers) for telecommunication services to be delivered by Carriers in the future. In order to provide the Moderator with sufficient information to process such a request, the buyer enters the information describing the request on a software-derived template and transmits such information to the Moderator. In order not to require each Buyer to establish a separate billing arrangement with each Carrier taking part in the bidding process, a central billing arrangement is advantageous.

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First Claim