Satellite CDR's
Inmarsat Traffic Billing

Satellite Airtime Billing

The number of different satellite providers are large and the number of provided services is even larger.

Inmarsat is one of the very large satellite providers that have services across many generations of satellite. Their services are 3, 4, 5 generation service that typically provide group of services across Aero, Maritime and Land. Each of these market sectors cover a large range of sub services across mining, fishing, media, offshore, energy to be listing a few.

For each of these area's are their special developed terminals and antenna's that provide services across voice, data and messaging.

These service groups does again provide different sub types of services for crew call, M2M, geo specific data and similar.

All provided services will be generating different traffic output that are highly mapped to the provided service - the format of these call record (CDR's) will typically be different as well as the general format dependant on the platform that is the source of the traffic.

Meaning that CDR's coming from Inmarsat Mini-C is formated different from CDR's coming from example Inmarsat FBB, on Inmarsat FBB will their gain be different formated CDR's for data, for voice and for messages.

Traffic CDR's

Inmarsat traffic CDR's are delivered across SFTP interfaces in near real time. For Voice CDR's are they typically delivered after the call as a full CDR, if the can be directly or it can be delivered from the former Stratos now also named Inmarsat. Traffic CDR's delivered from the former Stratos can be traffic CDR's covering not just Inmarsat services but also Iridium, Thuraya, VSAT and similar - these traffic CDR files are not delivered in real time - where traffic CDR's directly from Inmarsat typically will be delivered in near real-time.

Inmarsat offer a very broad set of satellite services that are delivered from many different platforms - these platforms are all having different traffic CDR format - meaning collecting Inmarsat CDR files, mediating these and performing rating on these all need different mediation modules.

Each service are having a set of charging groups - like subscription fees, activation, disconnect, temporary suspend, upgrade, downgrade and traffic - Inmarsat 'only'generate traffic related CDR files - meaning other types of fees need to be generated locally in the billing system.

- Inmarsat Voice CDR sample
- Inmarsat Data CDR sample
- Inmarsat SMS CDR sample

Subscription Fees

Traffic CDR data delivered directly from the major satellite operators herunder Inmarsat doesn't contain subscription fees. These need to be generated internally linked to the type of subscrption fee that is associated with the service. If receiving CDR files from resellers like Stratos, AST, Singtel or similar will the subscription fee normally be added to the collected CDR output - our system will normally discard these subscription fees and be generating all internally with the many different possibilities to be added.

Subscription fees can be daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly or biyearly - combined with a lot of different options like floating period, or prorated period, forward subscription, backward subscription. A long list of possible rules can be combined with the subscription period for early termination, minimum subscription period and similar.

Event Charging Fees

Basically any action in the system can generate events that can be informative or can be charged - sample of events can be package upgrade, package downgrade, sim swap, changing usage monitoring, reminders, notifications, their is hundreds of different events generated linked to terminalk actions, user actions and similar.

Charging Rules

All collected traffic data are getting mediated into a single uniform event based charging format - for each single event can their be applied rules that tell the rating process how to be processing a given event.

Example of these traffic event rules can be that their is a minimum usage of 10 seconds or 20Kb, another rule can be minimum increment size, another rule can be geo dependant rating, or time dependant rating, zone billing, or it can be rules linked to how 1MB is calculated like in Iridium will it be (bytes x 1000 x 1000) to get one MB, in Thuraya bytes x 1000 x 1024, in Inmarsat bytes x 1024 x 1024 - this is illustrating some of the many rules that can be applied dependant in how rating need to be processed.

Inexpensive Inmarsat Billing

Many small satellite resellers start doing billing through Excel sheets but when the business grow will this process start getting time consuming and human errors are getting into the normal manual processes.
Our satellite billing environment allow a small reseller to get started almost for free, and following apply increased fees when the business start to generate good output.
Get started with a highly professional satellite billing environment that offer the most advanced capabilities in the current market - a billing system that have references across the biggest satellite companies linked to the high performance, extrem level of security provided, that are fully integrated across all major satellite providers for provisioning, billing, monitoring and as well offer direct access to advanced data pop capabilities like end customer firewall management or data throttling with high data usage.

A satellite billing environment that handle basically any traffic CDR format - even internal build services are easy to integrate.

CDR Collection & Mediation

Our Satellite Business Environment is build on the latest software technologies and have been implemented to offer Scalability, Redundancy as well as a Military grade Security across all implemented elements - the offered environment provide basically all needed in a succesful satellite operator setup ascoss provisioning, convergent billing, real-time traffic monitoring, data POP environment in New York, Amsterdam or Hong Kong as well as basically any satellite services like tracking, remote terminal management, integrated M2M management, WAN acceleration ...

- Inmarsat CDR Mediation Explained
- Inmarsat CDR sample explained

Rating & Price Plans

Our Satellite Business Environment is build on the latest software technologies and have been implemented to offer Scalability, Redundancy as well as a Military grade Security across all implemented elements - the offered environment provide basically all needed in a succesful satellite operator setup ascoss provisioning, convergent billing, real-time traffic monitoring, data POP environment in New York, Amsterdam or Hong Kong as well as basically any satellite services like tracking, remote terminal management, integrated M2M management, WAN acceleration ...

Redundant frontend nodes provide advanced - and easy to use interfaces for operator as well as self care for end customers - redundant backend nodes handle all the key functionality and is directly integrated with all the major satellite providers on the market like Inmarsat, Iridium, Intelsat, Eutelsat, Thuraya ... - Database environment is implemented in a Galara Cluser with three nodes that all are fully encrypted in-rest as well as in-transit to protect from Ransomware issues - All implemented in highly secure setup with ISO27001, SOC1, SOC2, SOC3 and PCI certifications.

ERP Financial Integration

Quickly connect your existing ERP to our billing solutions. Palette allows for ERP integration with over 50 of the world’s leading ERPs.

What does it mean?
ERP integration refers to the process of connecting and synchronizing your ERP system with other business applications such as satellite traffic, subscription fees, B2B portal and Revenue Assurance. In essence, connecting all key points a business leverages to input, manage, track and output data that’s meaningful and important for the business. These systems can be seen as an extension of the ERPs core functionality.

Our billing setup handle invoices, invoice splitting, order number tracking, expire dates, contracts linked to customers and payments - your ERP system manage customer /invoice payments and keep a record of the financial interaction with the customer - where needed will our billing system alighn payment status so the end user can track own payments - and in case of missing payments do we have the capability to handle reminders as well as credit notes.

Real Time Satellite Billing

Satellite billing can normally be a really complicated setup especially when gathering satellite billing data from many sources - we have been in the business from the beginning and have all the needed technical knowledge and understanding in delivering a scalable and solid billing environment. A billing platform that over the last 20 years have been in a constant evoilution now offering a rock solid environment that combine advanced functionality with a highly adaptive and user friendly interfacing, that offer operator an easy way to managing basiucally any satellite service offering as well as offering the operators customers unmatched self care in a multi level setup where the operator manage all permissions across the many levels. it is divided into three different main blocks to ensure highest possible security, unmatched degree of user friendly interfaces.

Frontend Environment offer easy and simple day to day management for operator and for customers, operator dashboard offer advanced management for operator super users, building rating plans with drag & drop, adding new products through wizards, building new CDR formats using drag & drop, and the final block is our backend system that offer connectivity to the other modules through highly secure API implementations. All parts can be running in redundant mode, all connectivity is stateless allowing the platform to scale unlimitted on top of our cluster database environment that operate in master-master-master replicated mode.

Collect, Mediate, Rate, Invoice...

Billing cover several workflow, across collecting traffic data, mediating collected data, apply rating, maintain allowance, generate fees linked to activation, subscription, resume, hibernate, upgrade, downgrade, disconnect, extra services, installation, value added fees and similar.
Collecting external CDR files can be done using sftp/ftp/email/internal dropzone/API collector, when a file is collected will it be mediated into our internal event based format - new CDR file formats can be implemented using our mediation wizard that make it extremly easy adding new formats, by standard will almost all standard CDR formats be fully supported already, when mediation is performed will our rating part be processing collected data in real time, adding minimum usage, minimum increment, adjust allowance across usage allowance or spending allowance, any form for product are fully suported across postpaid, prepaid, group packages as well as large pool groups.

When rating have been applied can invoices be generated at any stage, as long as the billing period is open then will generated invoices be marked with draft across the invoice to indicate it is in draft mode, if operator want to close and generate a single operator or print group then is this fully supported.

Invoices are generated based on invoice templates that control the layout of a given invoice, this mean the operator can have multiple invoice layout and formats as well as invoices in specific languages, generated invoices can be send to print, as email to user, as well as it can be made acailable in the frontend interface, it is also possible to generate invoice reports that can contain all charging and traffic details linked to a given invoice. Split invoicing are fully supported - allowing the operator to make one invoice for airtime, one for hardware, one for installation and one for services.Bo.

CDR Format Wizard

Their is constantly new CDR formats to be added in the current satellite business - to simplify this process have we developed a CDR Wizard - that allow new CDR formats to be added using drag & drop.

Specify source - if SFTP, FTP, email or similar then continue by draging a sample CDR document into wizard and use the wizard to learn the billing system to understand the new format - when done load the associated service tags into the event plan. Then is a new CDR format added without any coding done.



When new format is build using wizard then load the new service tags supplied with the new format into event plan and rating of the new format is ready without any coding needed. Service tags identify the individual services - like background data, SMS and similar.

Solid and proven Billing Infrastructure

We are operating some of the worlds largest satellite installations that have more than 70 servers in a single operator setup - meaning we have a proven a solid knowledge in building and operating large replicated database environments with integrated backup and recovery procedures, we have over the years been constantly improving our architecture, hardware, operating systems, API installations that ensure a solid environment from the beginning.

Traffic pools - Dual CDR processing

If the operator have large traffic pools that are shared across many customers / many terminals - then can it be difficult to figure out when it is a good idea to upgrade to a bigger shared traffic pool.

To solve this problem is our billing platform able to process the same mediated CDR's on the different placeholders - first will it process CDR on the given simcard inside the CDR received and then on the associated group, a large shared traffic pool is very different from SCAP and normal Inmarsat groups - as a SCAP or Group can belong to a very large shared traffic pool. See below drawing to get a better idea.

Billing Revenue Assurance

Deep traffic data analysis is an integrated part of our billing process - without this kind of data validation can it be difficult to ensure that the billing and rating process are done in a proper way.

Collected traffic CDR's get constantly validated through our revenue assurance process that check collected data for dublicated data, for failed mediated CDR data, read more in the below links.


- Satellite Billing Revenue Assurance
- Revenue Assurance Overview

Billing based on proven Open Source

Our Billing infrastructure is based on standard proven open source components - no legacy software like Windows and similar - this is to ensure that the best possible and proven elements are being included without the demand for automated software updates and similar. Our backend is developed in a solid version of Enterprice Jave, our Database cluser is based on MariaDB, our frontend and operator dashboard environment are based on hardend PHP. .

Single Invoice across Services

Satellite billing can normally be a really complicated setup especially when gathering satellite billing data from many sources - we have been in the business from the beginning and have all the needed technical knowledge and understanding in delivering a scalable and solid billing environment. A billing platform that over the last 20 years have been in a constant evoilution now offering a rock solid environment that combine advanced functionality with a highly adaptive and user friendly interfacing, that offer operator an easy way to managing basiucally any satellite service offering as well as offering the operators customers unmatched self care in a multi level setup where the operator manage all permissions across the many levels. it is divided into three different main blocks to ensure highest possible security, unmatched degree of user friendly interfaces.

Frontend Environment offer easy and simple day to day management for operator and for customers, operator dashboard offer advanced management for operator super users, building rating plans with drag & drop, adding new products through wizards, building new CDR formats using drag & drop, and the final block is our backend system that offer connectivity to the other modules through highly secure API implementations. All parts can be running in redundant mode, all connectivity is stateless allowing the platform to scale unlimitted on top of our cluster database environment that operate in master-master-master replicated mode.

Flexible Invoice Generation

Billing cover several workflow, across collecting traffic data, mediating collected data, apply rating, maintain allowance, generate fees linked to activation, subscription, resume, hibernate, upgrade, downgrade, disconnect, extra services, installation, value added fees and similar.
Collecting external CDR files can be done using sftp/ftp/email/internal dropzone/API collector, when a file is collected will it be mediated into our internal event based format - new CDR file formats can be implemented using our mediation wizard that make it extremly easy adding new formats, by standard will almost all standard CDR formats be fully supported already, when mediation is performed will our rating part be processing collected data in real time, adding minimum usage, minimum increment, adjust allowance across usage allowance or spending allowance, any form for product are fully suported across postpaid, prepaid, group packages as well as large pool groups.

When rating have been applied can invoices be generated at any stage, as long as the billing period is open then will generated invoices be marked with draft across the invoice to indicate it is in draft mode, if operator want to close and generate a single operator or print group then is this fully supported.

Invoices are generated based on invoice templates that control the layout of a given invoice, this mean the operator can have multiple invoice layout and formats as well as invoices in specific languages, generated invoices can be send to print, as email to user, as well as it can be made acailable in the frontend interface, it is also possible to generate invoice reports that can contain all charging and traffic details linked to a given invoice. Split invoicing are fully supported - allowing the operator to make one invoice for airtime, one for hardware, one for installation and one for services.Bo.

Invoice Partner, Company, Subscriber

We are operating some of the worlds largest satellite installations that have more than 70 servers in a single operator setup - meaning we have a proven a solid knowledge in building and operating large replicated database environments with integrated backup and recovery procedures, we have over the years been constantly improving our architecture, hardware, operating systems, API installations that ensure a solid environment from the beginning.

Split invoicing - install, hardware, airtime..

If the operator have large traffic pools that are shared across many customers / many terminals - then can it be difficult to figure out when it is a good idea to upgrade to a bigger shared traffic pool.

To solve this problem is our billing platform able to process the same mediated CDR's on the different placeholders - first will it process CDR on the given simcard inside the CDR received and then on the associated group, a large shared traffic pool is very different from SCAP and normal Inmarsat groups - as a SCAP or Group can belong to a very large shared traffic pool. See below drawing to get a better idea.

Invoice Templates - Layout

Deep traffic data analysis is an integrated part of our billing process - without this kind of data validation can it be difficult to ensure that the billing and rating process are done in a proper way.

Collected traffic CDR's get constantly validated through our revenue assurance process that check collected data for dublicated data, for failed mediated CDR data, read more in the below links.

Credit Notes / Invoice mirrow

Our Billing infrastructure is based on standard proven open source components - no legacy software like Windows and similar - this is to ensure that the best possible and proven elements are being included without the demand for automated software updates and similar. Our backend is developed in a solid version of Enterprice Jave, our Database cluser is based on MariaDB, our frontend and operator dashboard environment are based on hardend PHP. .