ICG Helps Optimize Passenger Calling Services

The cruise line industry had a problem with optimizing passenger calling services. The requirements to any solution presented were to replicate the automation and conveniences offered by a contemporary business hotel and to make the billing and accounting functions automatic and accurate. Many of the large cruise lines came to ICG with their requirements because of the expertise acquired through years of providing communications management and control solutions to the commercial shipping and general aviation industries. ICG was tasked to provide a multi-medium communications control and switching center and to provide an accounting platform to account for every outbound call, whether it was revenue bearing or an expense. Another requirement was to make the system compatible with existing PABX systems and all types of communications transceivers and mediums, and to standardize the communications and billing operations fleet-wide. ICG developed two products, the MX-2000 communications platform and ProCAS, a communications accounting and billing system. The MX-2000 actually went far beyond the requirement to replicate a hotel operation. Features such as voice prompts and greeting messages, real-time answer supervision to support accurate billing, communications media restoration and least cost routing were successful features that became the requirement and the defacto standard for the industry. ProCAS evolved into a communications accounting system interconnecting to onboard posting systems and automatically charging accounts, similar to other profit centers onboard the cruise vessel. Besides billing passengers it also provided accounting for all communications and generated reports showing call costs and charges. It calculated net profits or overhead charges, logged crew calls and charges, and provided data-base files that could be used to generate spreadsheets or graphs of costs and revenues. The net result of this effort was a system that provided the cruise lines with increased profits, less manual intervention in the calling process and automatic passenger billing, statistical reporting. Telecommunications system efficiency peaked. In essence, the communications operations became an automated profit center just like other point of sale system on the vessel.