VIRTUAL TRADING FLOOR AND INTELLIGENT AGENTS FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

摘要

A system includes a virtual trading floor and a plurality of exchange points, each connectable to each other exchange point by remote switching equipment associated with each respective exchange point, wherein each exchange point is connectable to the virtual trading floor via the Internet to trade connection capacity between the exchange points. The virtual trading floor can match buy and sell orders from respective ones of the plurality of exchange points; and provision a connection between respective ones of the plurality of exchange points after a match has been made. Each exchange point further comprises an intelligent agent module constructed and adapted to automatically trade connection capacity on behalf of that user's pre-programmed parameters by site, wherein the agent module can buy new capacity when current capacity is close to being exceeded; sell existing capacity when the existing capacity is not needed; and buy new capacity if such a trade would provide capacity of a lower cost than current capacity; buy capacity for a user programmed marketing event; buy capacity for disaster recovery, meaning the user has a loss of another supplier for capacity and requires a short term contract to fulfill current capacity requirements; and to buy and sell capacity on a pre-programmed basis for time-of-day, week or month.