Dial-up Internet access service system with automatic billing mechanism

Due to the rapid growth of the Internet, many Internet service providers (ISPs) have sprung up in Korea. The typical access of their dial-up Internet services is for user to subscribe to an ISP and pay a monthly flat rate. But the rate is relatively expensive to a large number of users with occasional access. Therefore they are unwilling to join the Internet. This causes a loss of users to the ISPs and an obstacle to the Internet's growth. Meanwhile, as the contents providers (CPs) provide much better services, they tend to become commercial sites and, moreover, want to have their own billing method. The ISPs, therefore, have a need to provide an appropriate billing policy for the commercial CPs. We describe a dial-up Internet access service system with an automatic billing mechanism which is implemented to cope with the above trend. The system provides users with easy Internet access. It performs automatic billing based on the call connection time and the amount of data used. We expect, due to the system, the ISPs will attract a large number of new users and to be able to cope with changes in the CPs billing appropriately.