Cellular rental phone system and method having realtime data collection and billing

Claim 1

A cellular mobile communication system comprising: a plurality of mobile subscriber stations, each station including radio means for communicating with a cellular mobile radio system; a cellular mobile radio system having at least one cellular base station for serving said cellular mobile radio subscriber stations for the origination and termination of calls; a cellular communications switching system comprising: a plurality of trunk circuits to a public switched telephone network; means for selectively interconnecting said mobile subscriber stations and said public switched telephone network through said trunk circuits; system control means for enabling and disabling of service to said subscriber stations; and means for monitoring call activity and transmitting automatic message accounting data in real time over one or more of said trunk circuits; a cellular mobile radio rental system or cellular mobile radio credit transaction system comprising: means for entering and collecting customer transaction and credit card information; means for obtaining credit approval from a credit card clearinghouse; and means for communicating transaction and credit card data over said trunk circuits to and from said public switched telephone network to a collector system for the purpose of initiating and terminating customer transactions; and a collector system comprising: means for initiating and terminating customer transactions, means for receiving, filtering, and calculating long distance toll from said automatic message accounting data and generating billable call records; means causing said cellular communication switching system to change service for said mobile subscriber stations; means for compiling said billable call records into customer transactions and storing said customer transactions; and means for retrieving said stored customer transactions and transmitting same over said public switched telephone network.