Designed specifically for wireless ISPs, PowerCode's software goes beyond billing to support everything from content filtering to scheduling truck rolls.

by Jeff Goldman [November 22, 2006]

PowerNOC was founded in 2002 to provide software and hardware solutions for wireless ISPs—according to company CEO John Wright, about 100 WISPs worldwide currently use PowerNOC's software. In early 2006, the company's wireless hardware division was spun off as Jack Wireless, and PowerNOC was renamed PowerCode.

In addition to PowerNOC Billing, the company's range of PowerNOC ISP Tools includes the add-on modules PowerNOC BMU (Bandwidth Management Unit), PowerNOC Radius, PowerNOC Mail, and PowerNOC Filter. A wide range of additional modules, Wright says, are in the works.

PowerCode 801-701-6200 Sales@PowerCode.com

It's the way the modules work together, Wright says, that makes PowerNOC stand out. "We actually have the software code for the billing engine all in one screen—it's all web-based—and it talks to the BMU, so if the customer doesn't pay the bill, it can shut off the customer—as well as provisioning, mapping, those kinds of things," he says.

That kind of broad functionality, Wright says, makes PowerNOC Billing more of a complete OSS (operational support system) than just a billing solution. "It's billing, BMU, Radius connectivity to dialup users—as well as filtering and e-mail and many other modules that have become part of the OSS," he says. "Billing is just one piece of it."

A complete solution
Wright says the aim is to drive the entire process, starting with the first contact with the customer, walking them through the signup process, and following up at every step. "It schedules the vans and makes sure that there's installers on the roofs, with a complex ticketing system that allows them to also do Tier 1 and Tier 2 support," he says.

About 30 specialized reports are currently included with the system—Wright says most of them have been added in response to customer requests. Among the modules planned for the system, he says, is one that will allow users to configure their own reports.

The system is LAMP-based—Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP—which Wright says gives ISPs an enormous amount of flexibility if they want to make their own adjustments to the solution.

A fully functional trial version of PowerNOC Billing is available for free—the trial can support up to 50 customers. "We have about 2,000 users that have less than 50 customers," Wright says. "Quite a few of our customers start out with one or two or three or ten."

Per-user pricing
Beyond 50 users, pricing [.pdf] for PowerNOC Billing alone starts at a one-time fee of $1.99 per user for up to 250 users, $1.89 per user for up to 500, $1.79 per user for up to 1,000, and $1.59 per user for up to 2,000. Upgrades and support (both phone and e-mail) are available for $0.05 per user per month.

The additional modules are priced individually—PowerNOC BMU starts at $4.99 per user; PowerNOC Radius starts at $1.99 per user; PowerNOC Mail starts at $1.29 per user; and PowerNOC Filter starts at $2.99 per user.

Wright says scalability isn't an issue: he says the system can support up to 20,000 subscribers, and most of the WISPs the company works with have fewer than 1,000. "We're really building this product for that marketplace," he says.

For a one-time fee of $400, the company will migrate any client's legacy data into the PowerNOC software. "We're experts at converting from other people's data," Wright says. "We migrate the data quite easily from one system to another, especially legacy systems—Excel spreadsheets, QuickBooks, those kinds of things. We get them up and running quickly that way."

Designed for WISPs
What really makes PowerCode's offering stand out, Wright says, is the fact that it's built for WISPs from the ground up. "We haven't come from the traditional ISP dialup world and decided to just change our software to match a WISP—our roots are in the WISP world, we came from that world, we're going to stay in it, and everything about our knowledge has to do with things that the wireless ISP really needs," he says.

Wright says a key strength of the system in meeting WISPs' needs is the fact that it works with all brands of radios, even with hybrid networks. "If you have Motorola and a little bit of Trango and a little bit of Tranzeo and a little bit of whatever, we can work with all of them," he says.

Future plans for the system, Wright says, include a VoIP management module, a hotspot management module, integration with Google Maps to show how close a customer is to an AP, and integration with QuickBooks. "More is better on just about everything, and we're listening to what the customers are asking for and adding functionality," he says.

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