A Preseem Success Story

Minnesota WiFi

How a Minnesota WISP uses Preseem and its integration with Azotel to manage subscriber plans, simplify billing, and save time and money.

Minnesota WiFi

Founded in 2012 and led by owner and operator Darin Steffl, Minnesota WiFi is a fast-growing wireless internet provider that manages 40 towers across six counties in the state. A few years ago, Minnesota WiFi was looking for a Quality of Experience (QoE) solution to manage congested access points and deal with subscriber complaints proactively. Darin prioritized delivering consistent speeds to his customers and was looking for a solution that integrated with his billing platform, SIMPLer from Azotel.

Eventually, Darin decided to implement Preseem and take advantage of our API integration with Azotel. Since deploying the system, Minnesota WiFi uses the granular insights provided by Preseem to find and proactively fix QoE issues across towers, sectors, and subscribers.

Preseem’s QoE Optimized Shaping using Active Queue Management (AQM) further ensures that bulk applications like Netflix or streaming video don’t negatively impact interactive applications like video calls or online gaming. With Preseem, Minnesota WiFi can now provide stable and low-latency connections, even when customers max out their plan speeds. This leads to fewer support calls and happier customers!

Manual Processes Created Inefficiencies and Room for Error

Before integrating Preseem with Azotel, managing subscriber plans, service changes, and network policies required manual updates. These processes created opportunities for human error and made it more difficult to ensure that customer speeds, account status, and service access were always accurately reflected across systems.

For Minnesota WiFi, keeping subscriber experience consistent meant finding a way to simplify plan changes, automate service actions, and gain better visibility into network performance.

Automating Subscriber Management with Preseem and Azotel Integration

Preseem’s integration with Azotel enables our solution to stay in sync with changes to your subscriber packages, account status and equipment, so that it’s always enforcing speeds and collecting statistics accurately.

As Darin told us, the benefit of this integration for Minnesota WiFi is the ability to change a customer’s plan speed in Azotel and see it take effect automatically in Preseem. Also, when a customer is suspended for non-payment, Preseem automatically blocks their access. This has eliminated all of the manual work and human error that can happen when updating plan rates and disconnecting services for non-paying customers.

Similarly, when a previously non-paying customer pays on Minnesota WiFi’s online portal after hours, Preseem and Azotel turns their service back on automatically, all without the team lifting a finger! This has helped Minnesota WiFi to fully automate billing.

Preseem can also report usage to Azotel to drive usage reporting and usage-based policies. Overall, Preseem and Azotel’s API integration has helped Minnesota WiFi measure and optimize the subscriber experience in an easy and effective manner.

Another key aspect of the Preseem-Azotel integration is the simplicity of the implementation. For example, there’s no need for network access servers as might typically be required for a full deployment using other systems.

Preseem and its integration with Azotel has helped Minnesota WiFi:

Achieve stable, low-latency shaping
Launch automated subscriber plan enforcement
Gain better visibility into their network, enabling positive customer feedback and fewer support calls
Fix congested Ubiquiti APs and backhaul issues