Fixed Wireless Equipment

The Benefit Of Their Experience

It's a sign of maturity in the WISP industry: one of the oldest WISPs is building a WISP management software product.

by Gerry Blackwell [February 24, 2004]

If you're a one- or two-year-old WISP grown to a certain size, your life is probably getting a little—shall we say—interesting. It's no longer a shoe-string operation. It's getting serious now.

Neil Mulholland knows all about those growing pains. He's been through them as CEO and co-founder of Prairie iNet (PiN), one of the most successful WISPs in the country. In three years, PiN grew from zero to over 4,000 subscribers working in 120 rural and small-town markets in Iowa and Illinois.

"There are probably 100 to 120 WISPs [in the U.S.] right now whose businesses have grown to the point that they've begun to feel really stretched," Mulholland says. "Their customer bases have ballooned to where it's a real challenge for them to manage."

Mulholland hopes to be able to offer some relief.

Prairie iNet is partnering with Denver-based eVergent Technologies, a software developer with a background in telco and other service provider m-commerce solutions, to develop a comprehensive all-in-one back-office suite built from the ground up for WISPs.

The product will be offered, starting in the second half of this year, by Lentesco, a new stand-alone company set up as part of the joint venture. Lentesco will function as an application service provider (ASP).

eVergent's part of the deal was to develop the software. It is currently installing an initial beta version at Prairie iNet.

PiN's role was to provide the WISP operations expertise and its own partly-home-grown-partly-off-the-shelf back-office suite as a template on which to base the new solution.

"This is a case of necessity being the mother of invention," Mulholland admits. "We created [our current suite of tools] because we needed these things to run our business. We've got great components but it's not scalable."

The Lentesco solution, which the company will sell for between $2 and $3 per subscriber per month, depending on the number of modules used, includes everything a WISP needs to manage his business, Mulholland says.

Comprising several tightly integrated modules with a consistent look and feel, the product will be very scalable.

It will address billing, electronic funds transfer, credit card payment, authentication, bandwidth allocation, customer churn, trouble ticketing, work flow management, scheduling, dispatch and inventory management, including IP/MAC addresses, and customer premises and tower equipment inventories. And more.

The financial components are designed to integrate with the MAS 200 small business accounting system from Best Software.

Lentesco's initial target market—the 100 to 120 WISPs—represents about 6 percent of the estimated total of 2,000 in the U.S. The companies Lentesco will go after first are the ones that have been flying by the seat of their pants but can no longer continue that way.

"If they buy all the modules," Mulholland says, "it gives them a roadmap on how to manage their business from A to Z. It's not a guarantee that they'll be successful, but they're going to have information now that will give them control over their customers and their networks. It will tie everything together for them."

He has already talked to several WISPs that want this kind of product and are ready to buy something. There is nothing like the Lentesco solution currently available, he says. "As an operator, I haven't seen anything as comprehensive or as specific to WISPs."

Neither Lentesco nor PiN is marketing the product yet, though. In fact, on paper, Lentesco only has one officer—CEO Vijay Sajja, who works out of Denver and directs the development team, most of which is located in Hyderbad, India.

The first step is to prove the solution at PiN.

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