Importance

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Abstract

The problem of being unable to supply prescribed fair amounts of telephone traffic to each carrier in a foreign country is overcome by a) assigning a call to one of the carriers in a foreign country at the switch where the call originated b) including an indication of the identity of the assigned carrier with the call as the call is routed from the originating switch to an egress switch and c) retaining at the originating switch an indication of the carrier to which the call is currently assigned. The indication of the assigned carrier stays with the call until either the call is completed to the assigned carrier or it is determined that the call cannot be completed to the assigned carrier. This allows the originating switch to retain control over the assignment of a call to a carrier. Furthermore, the originating switch can cause all the routes from the originating switch to the originally assigned carrier to be tried before it allows another carrier to complete the call. Doing so results in a higher rate of completion of calls to their initially assigned carriers. Each carrier in a country is selected to be the initially assigned carrier for a predetermined percentage of the calls to that country, so as to return to each carrier its fair amount of traffic. The percentages according to which the carriers are chosen may be iteratively updated so as to secure close conformity with the predetermined fair amounts.

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First Claim