6
GroundBill is a Wholesale Billing Product, a Settlement System and a Statistical Analysis Tool aimed at AirCom service providers offering 2G and 3G Cellular services to Passengers on board Commercial Flights.
Ó
GroundBill is an highly customizable product designed for
operators offering mobile telephony and data access
services on board commercial aircrafts or on ships to
roaming passengers being customers of other mobile
operators. Its use is not limited to Airplanes or Ships but
can be extended to situations where operators offer
wireless cellular network access, but do not have their own
customers.
The current version is targeting the airline market, and
supports rating, invoicing and billing towards other Mobile
Network Operators and Advertisers willing to send In Flight
broadcast SMS to passengers. GroundBill also keep track
of Calls (GSM, CDMA), SMS and EDGE/GPRS traffic for
submission to Airlines for compensation.
A powerful Drill Down Analysis tool,
permits to analyze calls and other
services in both volume and
revenues. Views can be defined per
Mobile Network Operator, per Airline,
per Flight, per Route, and for all
combinat ions thereof . Wi th
GroundBill the AirCom service
provider can immediately see which
Airlines, Flights or routes performs
best or worse, enabling them to take
corrective actions.
Rating features©
GroundBill supports rating towards four types of
entities: Mobile Network Operators (MNO),
Airport Operators, Advertisers and Airlines.
For the MNO, the services charged are Outgoing
and Incoming calls, Outgoing and Incoming SMS
and GPRS/EDGE Data Traffic. For each of those,
tariffs can depend upon duration of the service,
upon volume of bytes transferred, or upon items.
Within each rating mode, rating values can be
applied to multiple units, such as seconds,
minutes and hours for calls, allowing the desired
granularity. Non recurring charges per item can
also be applied. Once the CDR have been rated,
Billing can be applied for all MNOs or for a
particular one, and the Billing period can be
arbitrary selected between any two dates.
Airline Support
Airlines will play a role in the overall Telecom
Aeronautical Business Model. Three different
compensation schemes can be chosen:
A flat model where a fixed charge will be done and
bound to the operational expenses, i.e. bound to
the Flight and Aircraft Type.
A more revenue oriented schema where the
compensation will consider the exposed
business, i.e. bound to the number of passengers
and to the duration of flight (therefore bound to
the call probability, i.e. the revenue probability).
A fully proportional schema that will compensate
the airline according to the revenues of the
Aircom Operator. In this latter case, rating will be
applied in a manner similar to the MNO rating.
Advertisers
A significant part of the AirCom revenues can
derive by Advertisers, sending SMS to the
Passengers during the flight or using
conventional advertisements in the plane.
Examples of Advertisers are Hotels, Rental Car
Companies, Restaurants, who can tailor their
advertisement depending upon the destination
where the flight is going to. GroundBill supports
Advertiser contracts per Flight, allowing to send
SMS at will at the beginning, end or during the
flight to passengers. For these services
GroundBill will calculate a charge that depends
upon the flight or simply upon the Airline.
In order to stimulate Passenger's Call back, and
considering the relative high rates they will be
charged by their home MNO, a “quasi” toll free
mechanism is implemented in GroundBill. Calls
and SMS that are destined to the advertiser, are
collected and sent in real time (at the end of the
flight) to the Advertiser. In this way the Hotel can
deduct the Call charges from the Customer Bill
when they will check out from the hotel or return
the rental car.
CDR Generator
GroundBill contains an automatic CDR generator,
which can be used to simulate Business
Operations and revenues from different Actors
point of view. Using the built in Database of
Flights, one can simulate a real scenario and also
set up and tune tariffs, price lists and discounts
before going into real live service, as some
introductory prices may be difficult to correct
when operational.
Data warehousing and Statistical Analysis
A very important feature of GroundBill is its
capability to analyze CDR to extract different
analysis view.
All services, whether calls or SMS can be
examined by their number or value (after rating).
The above parameters can be viewed by MNO, by
Airline, by route and any combination thereof.
Therefore it will be possible for the Operator to
point out the most promising Airlines or the poor
performers, and also the routes, the dropped
calls, allowing a fast reaction and renegotiation of
their roaming agreements.
Interfaces
Billing Mediation Interface to collect Network
Elements (MSC, SGSN and GGSN) accounting
data.
Platform© ®
GroundBill runs on Windows 2000 and ®
Windows XP . It is built as an application on top ®of Microsoft Access , and does not require an
expensive Database to run. A version with
Microsoft SQL Server as a back end database is
also soon available.
Customization
High flexibility is provided by customizing the
product on demand to specific Aircom providers
needs. Legacy interfaces with Airline CRM
systems can be implemented on request when
the statistics need to go to passenger detail level.
Passenger behavior learning function can be
switched on to acquire useful marketing
information.
When combined with JetBill, GroundBill offers a
seamless complete Billing solution for Services in
the Aeronautical Environment.
Other GroundBill uses
GroundBill has all the functionality needed to
serve Mobile Network Operators having no native
Customers, but offering roaming cellular
telephony access to subscribers of mobile
network operators with whom they have roaming
agreements. This business model applies for
example when a local provider wants to offer
cellular services in an uncovered remote area,
but does not want to become a fully fledged
mobile operator. By teaming with a licensed
cellular operator, this can offer access services to
roaming customers and can use GroundBill to
calculate and bill the roaming MNOs.
PlaneBill Srl Via Accoramboni 29
00044 FRASCATI - ITALY Tel: +39-335-222908
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.planebill.com
