Claims
- 1. A digital delivery system facilitating the provisioning and billing of a service offered to subscribers, comprising:
at least one service, wherein the at least one service generates an offering marketed to a subscriber of the digital distribution system, and wherein the offering comprises metadata and a price algorithm; and a billing system in communication with said at least one service, wherein the billing system is capable of interpreting the metadata to generate a bill corresponding to the offering.
- 2. The digital delivery system of claim 1, wherein the a billing system maintains at least one table comprising tax-related information associated with the offering.
- 3. The digital delivery system of claim 1, wherein the metadata comprises a plurality of billing items, and wherein said billing system identifies at least one of said billing items for inclusion in the metadata.
- 4. The digital delivery system of claim 1, further comprising a marketing component, wherein said marketing component provides marketing data associated with the offering to said price algorithm.
- 5. The digital delivery system of claim 1, wherein said price algorithm computes an offering price for the offering.
- 6. The digital delivery system of claim 1, further comprising a network controller in communication with said at least one service, for provisioning the offering to a set-top box.
- 7. The digital delivery system of claim 6, wherein said network controller is in indirect communication with said billing system.
- 8. An offering that facilitates the provisioning and billing of a service to a subscriber in a digital delivery system, comprising:
metadata, wherein the metadata comprises billing related information identified by a billing system and generated by said service, wherein said metadata is utilized by the billing system to compute a bill for the offering; and a price algorithm, wherein said price algorithm generates a list price for said offering, and wherein said list price is used by said billing system to compute a bill for the offering.
- 9. The offering of claim 8, wherein said offering corresponds to a line item on a bill generated by said billing system.
- 10. The offering of claim 8, wherein said price algorithm generates a list price for said offering based upon marketing data associated with said offering.
- 11. The offering of claim 10, wherein said marketing data is provided by a marketing server.
- 12. A method of facilitating the provisioning and billing of a service in a digital delivery system, comprising:
generating an offering representing an item for purchase from the service, comprising:
querying a billing system to determine billing related metadata interpretable by said billing system, and creating said offering, wherein said offering comprises metadata corresponding to said billing related metadata identified by said billing system; and forwarding said metadata to said billing system such that said billing system can generate a bill for said offering based upon said metadata.
- 13. The method of claim 12, wherein creating an offering further comprises creating an offering comprising a price algorithm, wherein said price algorithm is utilized to compute a list price for said offering.
- 14. The method of claim 12, further comprising generating a bill at said billing system for said offering based upon said metadata.
- 15. The method of claim 14, wherein generating a bill for said offering based upon said metadata comprises accessing at least one tax related table in said billing system to determine taxes associated with said offering.
- 16. The method of claim 12, further comprising provisioning said offering to a subscriber of said digital delivery system, wherein said provisioning is implemented by said service.
- 17. The method of claim 16, wherein said provisioning further comprises determining whether said subscriber is authorized to receive said offering, and wherein said determination is executed by said billing system.
- 18. The method of claim 16, wherein provisioning said offering includes instructing a network controller to distribute content associated with said offering.
RELATED APPLICATION DATA
[0001] The present application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/263,176, titled “Service Offering Price Computation”, filed on Jan. 22, 2001, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Provisional Applications (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
|
60263176 |
Jan 2001 |
US |