Importance

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Abstract

Because of technological and regulatory changes, telecommunication service is becoming more of a commodity, with competition between service providers for traffic. The herein disclosed invention stimulates this competition 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 (e.g., least cost routing) resulting from a bidding process between participating telecommunication carriers (Carriers), administered by a bidding service provider through operation of a central processor, a computer referred to as a bidding moderator (Moderator). Some of these switches may be provisioned to treat every call attempt presented to them as a call attempt to be routed to the low-bidding Carrier. Other switches may be capable of handling call attempts from calling parties who are customers of the Moderator's auction service and from other calling parties who are not. Call attempts can be differentiated by such switches based on, for example, classes of service or data field indicators, with or without an association with an unique calling party identifier.

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First Claim