Pre-paid account gauge for mobile multimedia systems

Pre-paid subscribers in mobile networks frequently check their account balance. Presently the subscriber is notified regarding the balance by voice or SMS resources, which cannot be billed by the service provider. In this paper authors have presented a novel concept, by which a subscriber is informed his real-time balance without using the above resources. Moreover, the authors have developed a user friendly gui, which looks like the fuel gauge, on the screen of the mobile end point. Furthermore, a subscriber can use various services like voice, video etc. and continue observe the change in his balance on the gauge. The user can also minimize the gauge to the system tray and look for icon changes to indicate changes in the level of the balance. The above ideas have been implemented on a HP iPAQ PDA using Windows Mobile 2005 and tested successfully over a wireless network.