 of week (DOW): The same scenario of peak usage during office hours has an implication on special rates on specific days in a week. The usage of some services like Internet will be less on holidays compared to regular work- ing days. Service providers account for these usage patterns by preparing rate plans to suit user needs. Duration of usage: Rating can be based on duration of usage. The total time is a direct indicator of usage interval. When a flat rate is applied for a predefined interval of time, charge to customer would be a simple multiple of rate against the number of intervals in the duration of usage. It can also happen that the rate plan follows a set of rating increments. That is, rates keep on incrementing every 30 or 60 seconds. This could be the case for high demand services. Type of content: With an IP-based telecom framework a wide variety of con- tents are processed in the network. Different types of content involve differ- ent levels of bandwidth utilization. It could also happen that some content OSS/BSS Functions has a higher demand for which the users are willing to pay a premium. This leads to different rates based on the type of content. Jurisdiction: Rates can vary based on geography. The regional rate plan will be different from the national rate plan, which would be different from the international rate plan. The state level taxes, rules, and regulations can also impact rating. Volume of data: Rating could also be based on volume of data. That is the rate would be applied on per packet or per byte basis. This could be extended to specifying usage limits and incremental rates based on usage volume. After the value of attributes to be rated are identified, the next step in rating is to look up the rate table for applying the rate against the value of the attribute. The rate tables corresponding to different rate plans are identified using the unique rate table ID. Once the value of attribute value and rate is identified, next the event charge is computed. From the event charge the final