METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR TERMINATING AND NEWLY CONSTRUCTING A SEND ROUTING INFORMATION (SRI) MESSAGE IN MOBILE NETWORKS

An originating SMSC in Network A issues an SRI-SM towards the HLR of a recipient (User B in Network B). One of a number of N Platforms or Message Controllers ("MCOs") intercepts the SRI-SM. Instead of passing on the SRI-SM, the MCO terminates it and performs a full decode of all fields, specifically extracting the recipient MSISDN from it. The MCO then constructs a new SRI-SM for the same MSISDN, but forcing the new request to ask for all available data, including, but not necessarily limited to visited-MSC address, SGSN address and IP-SM-GW address. When a response is received the MCO generates a fresh query response for the originating SMSC instead of merely routing on the response which it receives. If the MCO is programmed to provide a false address for smart services it incorporates the false address in the query response which it generates.