METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING A PROCESS FOR REGISTERINGWITH A PLURALITY OF INDEPENDENT SERVICES

A method and an apparatus provide a user the capability of a single registration process or point of contact for registration which nonetheless enables the user to be authenticated to two or more independent service providers. A network architecture assumes the responsibility of functionality common to a plurali ty of service providers where such functionality includes service registration, authentication for a service, encryption for the communications with the service, monitoring of usage of the service and billing for such usage. This reduces the cost and complexity for the user and server end points of the network allowing a more diverse group of service providers to offer ever improving services without need for investing in processing structure that can be better incorporated within the network and shared amongst a plurality of providers.