Hello WISPA Folks,
My name is Matt Beaton, co-creator of Swift Fox Systems.
Thought I’d drop a quick note introducing you to our new software that helps
WISPs more easily manage their entire business. We’re an independent outfit,
going up against the big guys like VISP/Powercode/Azotel - and we have some
exciting features that I think you might find interesting.
My business partner, Scott Armstrong and I started a WISP ten years ago, and
like most small outfits we did everything ourselves - installs, phone support,
billing and tower rigging. I remember answering sales calls while clinging to
a tower and apologizing for the wind noise, being interrupted during Christmas
dinner with an outage, and pulling all-nighters when a lightning took out
towers. There were days that I was discouraged, but all the excited clients
getting high speed Internet for the first time made it completely worthwhile.
We worked seven days a week, so to save us time I relied on my background in
software development to write some tools to help us out. It started out with
a way to track MAC addresses, and eventually grew into a billing system,
network monitoring system, and a lot more. As we grew, we kept adding to it
and about four years ago we posted a screenshot on the Ubiquiti forums. We
were asked by other WISPs what software we used. It gave us an idea - so we
hired our dedicated team of developers and re-wrote it from the ground up to be
a solid system that any WISP can use. We now have WISPs varying from 50 to
12,000 subscribers on the system and everyone really likes it.
Here are some of my favourite features:
Network Monitoring Pinglog
One of our big challenges was knowing if there was a network problem or not.
We used some simple monitoring software that pinged the APs, and that told us
if they were up or down, but if there was noise on the local loop (which was a
huge problem with our early 2.4GHz Tranzeo equipment), we had no idea. So I
wrote something that would ping every CPE, every minute, and graph the results
in a colour-coded way. This made it really easy to see if there was noise or
capacity problems, and super quick to know if a channel change fixed the
problem or not. The information is saved on each customer account, and can
also be viewed by AP. It’s kept historically forever, so if a client says they
went down two weeks ago, you can check it for yourself.
Network Mapping
Once a network gets to be a certain size it’s really hard to keep track of IP
addresses and how everything ties together. Visio charts work great but they
always get outdated. In our software, we have a built-in network map editor.
You set up all your towers, the backhauls between them, the APs and routers
etc. - and it automatically logs in to gather association data, signal
strengths, throughput, frequency, etc. It’s really quick and easy, and means
everyone can stay on top of network changes. The network map changes colour
in real-time to show the network status, and you can click through the APs to
get pinglogs like the one above.
Integrated Call Centre Recordings
Every sales and support call gets recorded, automatically linked to the
customer account by Caller ID, and saved in the support history for later
playback. It works with all phone systems, and really helps if you outsource
your phones and want to keep tabs on how things are being handled. Statistics
like call rates, average hold times, etc. are automatically graphed so you can
figure out whether you need to hire more techs or not.
Super Simple Automated Billing
Built-in credit card / direct debit support, automatically send statements by
email or generate printable statements to mail out. Tracks bandwidth usage
for each client and can automatically throttle or charge overage fees.
Clients can be automatically disconnected for non-payment, which triggers a
“captive portal” page in their web browser so that they can pay their bill
online and get reconnected. This takes a ton of the work out of collections
and really automates the whole billing process. All of this is done without
any special inline equipment, it automatically changes rules and gathers
information from your Mikrotik routers.
A whole bunch more - check out our quick video demo
(http://swiftfox.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8e5cf7b449b7c6c29bbfc45e1&id=fa8fcd90d4&e=6a7d73f8f6)
There’s a ton of other things that Swift Fox does, like GPS tracking of your
vehicles (saves the co-ordinates of your clients automatically!), built-in
scheduling, frequency planners, subnet planners, inventory management, VoIP
service management - pretty much everything you need to run a WISP, all in one
place.
Thanks to our software, we profitably ran our WISP for 11 years building it up
to a company grossing over $2 Million dollars a year with nearly 20 employees
before selling it to a competitor at a premium price. We are helping our ISP
partners replicate that success!
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the software and feel free to
contact us anytime for an assessment on customization for your WISP.
Regards,
Matthew Beaton
Swift Fox Systems
www.swiftfox.net
[email protected]
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