GB2381998A

GB2381998A - Delivery of e-mail to a text telephone

Info

Publication number: GB2381998A
Application number: GB0126749A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Jeffrey Wilson
Original assignee: Intellprop Ltd
Current assignee: Intellprop Ltd
Priority date: 2001-11-07
Filing date: 2001-11-07
Publication date: 2003-05-14
Also published as: GB0126749D0

Abstract

Determining whether an email message may be delivered to a text message telephone receiver, and if so forwarding at least a portion of the email, and responding to a reply function signal from the text phone to send a reply to the originator of the email. The reply signal may request the transmission of a further part of the email message to the mobile phone. The reply function may be a defined character or combination. A database may be included to convert a received email address into a corresponding destination telephone number. An alphanumeric sender identifier may be associated with each short message service text to signify the sender's identitiy and a sequence field to distinguish the different messages from the same sender.

Description

TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES APPARATUS BACKGROUND Personal communication by means of text messaging is well established, and the Short Message Service (SMS) of the GSM system for mobile telephone communication has risen in popularity to the point where SMS generates a very significant revenue stream for mobile operators. At the same time, trends have developed towards unification of various types of mail and messaging services. As a result of this gradual integration process, there is now a degree of interworking between certain messaging media. For example voice messages can be left or retrieved using either fixed or mobile telephones, and email may be written or read using a variety of devices including mobile terminals. SMS is usable not only as a means of textual communication between mobile telephones, but also as a means for partial email delivery, or as a vehicle for alerting the user about email arrival on another system ('email Alert. ') This invention concerns the usage of text messaging facilities for the improved operation of an email service. Current use of SMS in relation to email is confined to two main areas- 1. the email Alerting function previously mentioned, whereby delivery of an email message to a particular email account results in a Short Message being sent to an associated mobile telephone number. This SMS alert, being limited to 160 characters, is usually formatted to contain all or part of each of the sender identity, subject line and message body, according to how much of the original email can be fitted in the email Alert.

2. use of the mobile telephone account as an email account, so that the mobile terminal is capable of sending or receiving an email message, usually with the restriction that the destination email address, the subject line and the message body, together with suitable delimiters, are fitted within 160 characters.

The distinction between an'email Alert'and a normal email or partial email message received on a mobile terminal is that an email Alert, although it may contain all or part of an email message, indicates that an email message has arrived on a different system and may now be retrieved there in full, whereas an email or partial email message is not an email Alert if it is delivered directly to a mobile telephone with no other destination system receiving the message. For the purposes of this invention, the distinction is not important, and the text of the description applies equally to both types of message.

Some terminals may allow longer messages either by making use of concatenation of messages, or by sending or receiving multiple individual messages. However most mobile terminals do not support concatenation, and in any case the user is charged for sending multiple messages whether concatenated or not. It would be desirable for the receiving user to have the option of receiving subsequent message parts, rather than always receiving only the first one as is the case with current Alert facilities.

In both of the examples given above, although one can send an email message from any email terminal, fixed or otherwise, to a suitable mobile email account, it is not generally possible to use the Reply function of a mobile terminal to return a reply to the sender of the email message. This is because email-sending (and hence also reply-sending) facilities on a mobile telephone network are usually implemented using an email server that is set up to interpret Short Messages sent to a special number (e. g. a Short Code) of the mobile network. The destination address and subject line of the desired email message are normally part of the Short Message body, and are usually indicated by delimiting characters, so that the server can interpret them correctly. Although this addressing information may be present in the originally received message, delimited as described, it would require the Short Message to be edited by the recipient prior to re-sending (to the special number) for the user to make use of it in a similarly formatted reply. This is too complex an operation for the average user, and so it would be desirable for the Reply function built into the Man Machine Interface (MMI) of the handset to work transparently for emails as it does for SMS.

The invention described here provides transparent operation of the Reply function of the handset for received emails or Alerts, even when only a partial message is received, and also allows the receiving user to request subsequent parts of a longer message in a very simple way.

DESCRIPTION OF INVENTION The invention allows the recipient of an email or partial email message or an email Alert to use the built-in Reply function of his handset, and to enter new text which will be delivered to the email address of the original sender. There is no requirement for the user to edit any part of the original message, or to enter any destination address details. Separate replies to multiple messages from the same email source address are handled transparently. Further parts of partial emails or Alerts received by SMS can also be requested by simply using the Reply function, and entering one or more special characters (for example'.') as the reply text, signifying to the

network that the user wishes to receive'More'of the relevant message. Again such'More' requests relating to different messages from the same sender are distinguished automatically.

Email messages are delivered to mobile telephones using known techniques which associate a destination email address with a mobile telephone number, in order to deliver all or part of an email message, or to deliver an Alert which may contain all or part of the email message. In this invention, the originally sent message body may be formatted in any way convenient to the user for identifying the Sender, Subject and Message body, since no part of this information is used in constructing the reply. This provides considerable simplification to the use of email from a mobile telephone for both the sender and the recipient. This removes the formatting constraint which has been a hindrance to widespread use of email from a mobile terminal.

PRIOR ART A number of networks offer an email service to their mobile telephone customers which allows email to be sent to any destination email address. The user creates the email message using text entry facilities on his mobile handset and specifies the recipient, the subject line and the message body using a prescribed format. The message is then sent to a special number, which may be a short code, which causes the message to be delivered to an email server in the mobile telephone network. The server determines whether the destination address corresponds to a mobile telephone within the same network, in which case the message is re-addressed to that mobile and forwarded to an SMSC for delivery, or whether the destination address corresponds to an external address, in which case the message is converted to email format and delivered over the public Internet.

Email may also be received by the user on his mobile telephone. The sender must use an email address which is assigned to the user by the mobile network, and which commonly includes the user's mobile telephone number. Messages longer than 160 characters may be truncated or sent as two or more Short Messages. The 160 characters must include the subject line and sender details each of which may also be truncated. The email may either be sent from the public

Internet and received by the network's email server, or may originate from a mobile telephone on the same network as described above.

Some internet Service Providers (ISPs) uiiet < ui cinai ! Alert service m conjunctton with one or

more mobile telephone networks. This allows users to be alerted by SMS to the arrival of some

or all emails to their ISP email account, and also the option to be alerted to other events.

Typically an email Alert contains all or part of the key components of the email message.

Email and email Alerts sent to and from mobile telephones use SMS as the transport, and hence the messages normally pass through the store and forward functions of one of the network's Short Message Service Centres (SMSCs. ) During busy times, Short Message delivery can experience considerable delay, since messages become queued for delivery in the SMSCs. A significant proportion of Short Message deliveries are unsuccessful at the first attempt, and it is the SMSC's job to store and retry these later. As traffic levels rise during busy periods, so the number of messages queued for retries also increases. The time spent processing these retries reduces the resource available for new message delivery attempts, and so queue length and delay can rise very rapidly when the system is heavily used. Message delivery delay is almost always undesirable, and this is especially true in the case of Alert messages.

The preferred embodiment of the invention described below uses a Telsis SMS Router as the equipment which implements the invention. The SMS Router has also been disclosed as the equipment for implementing a number of related inventions some of which may be advantageously implemented in conjunction with the present invention. These other applications are disclosed in pending patent applications GB 109525.6, GB 0125416.8, and GB 0125745.0.

PREFERRED EMBODIMENT With reference to Figure 1, an email message is sent from fixed or mobile terminal (1) via a mobile telephone network (2), where it is delivered to a mobile telephone (3).

The equipment required to implement the invention is embodied in a Telsis SMS Router (5), an equipment which is designed and programmed to filter and modify Short Messages according to their content and addressing. The SMS Routers are placed in the network so as to be able to filter some or all messages prior to their arrival at an SMSC, either over the SS7 MAP interface or over a Host interface. Emails sent from mobile telephones of customers of the network would arrive over the SS7 interface to the SMSC, whilst emails sent from other mobile networks or the Internet would arrive over the Host interface. The necessary modification of any addressing parameters can be performed within the SMS Router, whilst table storage is implemented in an External Data table (6) accessible to all of the SMS Routers installed in a network.

First the case where the message arrives at the mobile network's email server (8) via the public Internet is considered : The sending terminal is typically either an Internet terminal or a mobile telephone on another network. The addressing details on the sending link (4) areSource address: sender's email address Destination address: recipient's email address By the standard means of Internet addressing which are well known, destination email addresses which are hosted by the mobile network are directed to the email server (8) of the mobile network. Within the email server (8), the destination email address is then converted to the mobile telephone number of the corresponding user by use of a Network database. The message is now forwarded to one of the network's SMSCs (9) over its Host interface for delivery, but the message intercepted by an SMS Router (5) prior to arriving at the SMSC.

The SMS Router (5) now obtains a Network Allocated Number from a pool of such numbers and associates it with this message. The mobile telephone number of the destination telephone, the Network Allocated Number and the email address of the sender, together with a time stamp and a record of the Subject line, are stored in an External Data table (6) within the network in preparation for handling any replies. The message is now forwarded to the destination mobile telephone, either directly by the SMS Router, or via the SMSC (9) for store and forward.

The addressing details on the receiving link (7) areA number: Network Allocated Number B number: Recipient's mobile telephone number derived from the recipient's email address as described above.

The Network Allocated Number and the Mobile telephone number of the recipient together form a pair which uniquely identify the message being sent in the External date table (6). If the recipient later replies to the message, then the B number address to which the reply is sent will automatically be set by the mobile handset to be the Network Allocated Number, while the mobile telephone number of the recipient who is now replying will automatically be sent as the A number (CLI) of the reply. Using the External Data table and this unique pair of identifiers, the destination address details of the intended recipient of the reply can be looked up.

The following example in conjunction with Figure 1 serves to illustrate the principles involved. An Internet user (1) whose email address is userl&commat;anynetwork. com desires to send an email to a mobile user (3) who is a customer of the mobile network AnyMobile, whose mobile email address is mobile3&commat;anymobile. com, and whose mobile telephone number is 07999 12345. The Internet user composes an email in a standard way using a personal computer and sends it to address mobile3&commat;anymobile. com via his ISP. The email arrives from the Internet at the email server of the AnyMobile network. There the email server determines the mobile telephone number associated with the email address, and reformats the message to SMS format with the mobile telephone number as the destination. The message and the sender's identity are then passed on to an SMS Router. The SMS Router allocates a'Network Allocated Number'from a pool and creates a table entry in the external data table as follows-

Date and Mobile number Network Subject line Email address of sender Time (CLI) of Allocated recipient Number 1 Nov 0799912345 0709911110"Hello"useri &commat;anynetwork. com 2001 00:30

The Network Allocated Number is allocated on a lowest fill basis, independently for each user.

I. e. for the first entry for a given CLI in the table, the first number from the pool is allocated.

Multiple different CLIs may therefore be allocated the same pool number. The second entry in the table for a given CLI will be allocated the next pool number currently unused by that CLI. In this way the allocated number acts as a unique identifier for each CLI, and can identify the senders of email messages associated with any CLI, up to the maximum number of pool numbers available. The number of pool numbers should be larger than the number of mobile emails that a user is allowed to have reply access to. If no further numbers are available to allocate to a user due to his current use of all of the available pool numbers, then a special number may be . allocated, which if replied to, indicates message sending failure.

Entries are deleted from the table after a defined period of time, for example one week.

The SMS Router allocates the number 07099 11110, and modifies the format of the message to SMS. The generated short message has the following addressing dataA number : 07099 11110 (The Network Allocated number) B number : 07999 12345 (The recipient's mobile number) The message body contains sender, subject and message body data, truncated as necessary to fit in 160 characters.

The message is then either forwarded to the SMSC in Mobile Originated SMS format for store and forward delivery, or preferably uses the capability of the SMS Router to fire the message in Mobile Terminated format directly to the MSC on which the mobile is currently registered, bypassing the SMSC. In the event of one or more failed deliveries by this route, the SMS Router can fall back to delivering the Short Message to the SMSC in Mobile Originated format.

The message is now received by the mobile, and its recipient desires to reply to it. Using the Reply function of the handset, the recipient enters a short text message and sends it. He has not entered any addressing details.

Due to the use of Reply, the destination number for the reply is now the Network Allocated Number (07099 11110), while the CLI is that of the mobile (07999 12345. ) The message is directed by normal network signalling means to an SMSC of AnyMobile's network where it is intercepted by an SMS Router before reaching the SMSC. The SMS Router recognises the destination number as one of the Network Allocated number range, and attempts to look up the CLI/Network Allocated number pair in the external data table. Provided the reply is within the deletion time period, the entry should be present, and the subject line and the email address of the desired recipient of the reply should be found from the table. The SMS Router then passes the message to the email server for delivery. The email server determines from the network database that mobile number 07999 12345 has an associated email address which is mobile3&commat;anymobile. com. The email server now reformas the message as an email addressed to userlganynetwork. com, from sender mobilc3&commat;anymobile. com, with subject line"RE : Hello", and sends it to the Internet for email delivery.

As an alternative to using a Network Allocated number it would be possible to create an alphanumeric'Sender ID'using a combination of an Alphanumeric identifier derived from the sender's identity or email address and a sequence field for distinguishing different messages from, the same sender. The combined SenderID must be 11 characters or less, since this is the maximum number of alphanumeric characters which can be stored as an address in a Short Message. For example, in the case described above, the Network Allocated number could be replaced by the alphanumeric string'userl&commat;anOOl', which is an l l-character string comprising the first eight characters of the sender's email address, followed by a three digit sequence ID.

It would then be possible for the recipient to formulate a reply to the message, whereby the return address for the Short Message would now be userl&commat;an001 instead of the Network Allocated number. Pending application GB 0125745. 0, discloses a means for permitting the network to accept and interpret Alphanumeric SMS addresses. By combining this disclosure with the present invention, an advantageous system is obtained whereby the recipient of a message can receive an alphanumeric sender ID (CLI) that may be meaningful to the recipient, rather than just a Network Allocated number.

Secondly, the situation where the sender's address is a mobile telephone account rather than an Internet email account is considered : The above description and example apply to this case, except that the messages would arrive over the SS7 interface to an SMSC, and the message and its reply would be forwarded in SMS format over SS7 rather than via the email server.

The functions of the email server could be advantageously integrated into the SMS Router. The reason for distinguishing the two functions in the description is that some networks already have implementation of the email server function. Before replying to an email Alert or a partial email received by SMS, the user may wish to received all or part of the remainder of the message. For the purposes of allowing the recipient of an email message or Alert on his mobile telephone to request further parts of a message that was too long to fit in 160 characters, the invention also provides for a special reply which indicates a, request for'More'. The message delivery and reply works in the same way as described above, except that if the SMS Router determines that the reply text consists of a defined sequence of one or more characters (for example a single'. ') then the SMS Router shall interpret this as a request for'More'of the original message. According to implementation, the entire original message may be stored for a period of time either by the email server or by the SMS Router. For this application it is particularly advantageous that the functions of the email server are integrated into the SMS Router. Upon receipt of a request for More, the SMS Router would then compose further SMS messages for delivery to the mobile telephone, containing subsequent parts of the original email. Note that the use of the Network Allocated number or the Alphanumeric identifier with a sequence ID serve to uniquely identify the particular message for which a further part is requested. No additional records are required to be stored in the External Data table, and the same Network Allocated number or Alphanumeric identifier is used for all parts of the message sent in this way. A reply to the sender is possible from any one of the individual parts.

GLOSSARY

CLI Calling Line Identity ISP Internet Service Provider MAP Mobile Application Protocol MMI Man Machine Interface of the GSM handset SMS Short Message Service of the GSM mobile telephone system SMS Host Equipment for souring and sinking Short Messages for specific applications SMS Router Equipment which embodies the invention and filters and responds to certain signalling messages.

SMSC Short Message Service Centre SS7 CCITT Signalling System no 7

Claims

1. A telecommunications services apparatus for providing communication between e-mail and telephone text message systems, the apparatus comprising means for receiving an e- mail message, for determining whether the e-mail message may be delivered to a text message telephone receiver and, in the event of determination of such a deliverable e- mail message, forwarding at least a portion of the e-mail message in text message form to the text message telephone receiver, and means responsive to a reply function signal from the text message telephone receiver to send a reply message to the originator of the e-mail message.

2. A telecommunications services apparatus for providing communication between e-mail and telephone text message systems, the apparatus comprising means for receiving an e- mail message, for determining whether the e-mail message may be delivered to a text message telephone receiver and, in the event of determination of such a deliverable e- mail message, forwarding at least a portion of the e-mail message in text message form to the text message telephone receiver, and means responsive to a reply function signal from the text message telephone receiver to forward a further portion of the e-mail message to the text message telephone receiver in the event that only a portion thereof was initially forwarded.

3. Apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the reply function signal includes one or more predetermined characters in the reply text.

4. Apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the predetermined character is a full stop (.).

5. Apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, including means for converting a received e-mail address into a corresponding destination telephone number.

6. Apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the converting means comprises a database in which destination e-mail addresses are associated with corresponding destination lephone numbers.

7. Apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 6, including means for providing a network allocated number for associating with each text message to be sent to a destination text message telephone receiver.

8. Apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 6, including means for creating an alphanumeric sender identifier for associating with each text message, the alphanumeric sender identifier comprising an alphanumeric identifier derived from the sender's identity or e-mail address and a sequence field for distinguishing between different messages from the same sender.

9. Apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the telephone text message system comprises a mobile telephone network, and the text messages are destined for mobile telephone receivers.

10. A telecommunications services apparatus for providing communication between e-mail and telephone text message systems, the apparatus being substantially as herein described with reference to and as illustrated in the accompanying drawing.