Insights & News for Internet Service Providers

08 December 2022

How to find the right Network Monitoring tool for your Hybrid ISP

Monitoring your network is an essential part of operating a successful ISP. Whether deploying Fiber to the home or a Wireless point to multipoint system, the network must operate flawlessly to deliver products and services to the customer.

17 November 2022

Why Automated Billing is Essential for Expanding your Business

It’s undeniable that cash flow is the backbone of any business, and that includes Internet Service Providers. Whether you are delivering service via fiber, satellite or somewhere in between, every avenue of your business depends on managing timely and accurate billing.

28 October 2022

Get Better Inventory Control with Business Intelligence

A shortage of inventory can lead to a loss of sales and decreased customer satisfaction. In this article, we will explore how to leverage Business Intelligence Reporting and how to keep track of your business's inventory levels and prevent costly inventory shortages.

19 September 2022

Understanding APIs and Which is Best for Scalability

Scalability and growth can be challenging when tech doesn't get along, and APIs can be the key to unlocking potential with disparate software applications.

06 September 2022

Choosing the right Accounting Firm for your ISP

Accounting is about more than balancing your debits and credits. Positioning your business for growth as an Internet Service Provider means understanding your revenue, expenditure, margins, and profit and loss.

02 September 2022

Automation Simplified with Sonar + tray.io

Sonar's rich API allows you to automate any action you can take within the application, and tray.io enables users to integrate apps and automate processes with an easy-to-use, low-code builder with a simple drag-and-drop interface.

23 August 2022

Sean Green Joins Sonar Software as New Chief Commercial Officer

For immediate release: Sonar Software Inc., a leading provider of BSS & OSS solutions for Internet Service Providers, announced today that Sean Green has joined the Sonar executive leadership team as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

09 August 2022

Inventory Management KPIs that Internet Service Providers Should be Tracking

Key performance indicators (KPIs) in inventory management are metrics that help you monitor and make decisions about your stock. One of the most critical inventory KPI metrics is the carrying cost of inventory, which will show you the total of all expenses that occur when storing unsold goods.

03 August 2022

How to Boost Efficiency in your Network Operations Center with Automation

It’s an undeniable fact that your NOC (Network Operation Center) is the backbone of your ISP. Of course, competitive pricing and positive customer experiences are important, but if the Internet isn’t functioning correctly, it will quickly outweigh the other positives of utilizing your services.

19 July 2022

A Guide to Navigating The New FCC Data Collection Filing

The FCC and Congress worked jointly to revise the existing broadband service data collection process, and on February 22nd, 2022, released a Public Notice announcing the filing dates for the newly created BDC program.

08 July 2022

Managing Tax Requirements in the VOIP & Telecom Industry

Taxation in the telecommunications industry is a complicated topic. In this article, we hope to provide you with some information that will clarify the taxation requirements and help your business reach a position of success.

10 June 2022

Essential Field Service Metrics for Dispatchers & Field Technicians

As an Internet Service Provider, it is essential to keep up with your company’s key performance indicators. KPIs help with assessing many key factors within your business, such as when you need to hire more staff, expand your coverage, or perhaps extend your support hours.

02 June 2022

How to Improve Accounting & Finance with Business Intelligence

Analyzing data isn’t easy, especially if it’s gathered inaccurately. Many ISPs are still siloing data, resulting in mislabeled, poorly collated, or poorly interpreted data.

25 May 2022

9 Things Every Internet Service Provider Should Automate to Save Time & Money

Operating an ISP can feel like an endless list of to-dos, emails, and mundane tasks that consume entire days. Infusing automation into your operations can have immediate money and time-saving benefits.

10 May 2022

Sonar's Status Page

When things cease to load or sync, it’s imperative that you understand what the root cause is. With this in mind, we’ve created the Sonar Status Page, a one-stop shop that relays real-time information on Sonar’s uptime/downtime, system metrics, along with access to ongoing and past incidents.

03 May 2022

Network Monetization & Market Expansion

Whether you're a large or small Internet Service Provider, your company's underlying goal is to grow. While expanding into new markets can be an effective way to leverage your core business for growth, before jumping in, there are many things to consider.

22 April 2022

Advantages of Hybrid Networks; Fiber vs. Fixed Wireless Internet

With the acceleration of fiber technology, WISPs are beginning to take things one step further by launching hybrid network models that combine the benefits of fiber and wireless together.

08 April 2022

Bundling for Growth: Service Add-ons to Increase ARPU

Bundling products and services have long been a marketing strategy for Internet Service Providers. As some ISPs shift to a la carte products and services, there is great value in offering bundles that benefit your customers while boosting profits.

16 March 2022

7 Customer Service Tips to Improve the Customer Experience

Great customer service is one of the most under-valued assets in a business.No matter how great your service is or how talented your staff is, one of the things that customers are most likely to remember is the direct interaction they have with your customer service team.

09 March 2022

How To Reduce Operating Costs & Increase ARPU For Your Multi-Dwelling Unit

Managing a Multi-Dwelling unit comes with significant expenses and, quite often, revenue limitations. Creative number crunching is imperative with the rise of operational costs and tenant turnover. Finding new ways to increase ARPU is critical to a healthy bottom line.

21 February 2022

Cyber Security Tips for Internet Service Providers

As an Internet Service Provider, it is vital that your staff follow cybersecurity policies and procedures to best protect against cyberattacks. Even the frontline staff who may think their actions have little to do with security are important to the integrity of your data.

14 February 2022

DHCP Delivery

For a long time, Sonar has handled DHCP and option 82 requests for large networks using the Sonar DHCP Batcher. Now, this functionality has been expanded and integrated directly into Sonar, thanks to the cloud scalability of Sonar v2!

09 February 2022

Scale Confidently with Microsoft Azure and Azure Kubernetes Service

When choosing a software partner for your business, scalability, data security, disaster recovery, and compliance are key areas to consider. See how modern architecture like Microsoft Azure and Azure Kubernetes Service enables scalability and growth for Internet Service Providers.

28 January 2022

Managing Network Incidents & Reporting Them in Sonar

Proactively monitoring your network is the best way to prevent equipment failures and network outages. But when incidents arise, it is imperative to act swiftly to avoid an increase in support tickets and unhappy customers.

14 January 2022

Challenges & Best Practices for Field Technician Scheduling

Field technicians that are overworked due to inefficient scheduling have a cascading effect on revenue, service call costs, and productivity. Learn the challenges and best practices for Field Technician Scheduling.

21 December 2021

5 Manual Tasks Holding your ISP Back from Growth

Many Internet Service Providers still rely on manual, repetitive tasks for vital business processes despite all of the technology at our disposal. Manual tasks can impact productivity, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, compliance, and revenue.

15 November 2021

How to Leverage Sonar’s Multi-Tenancy to Grow Your Business

There's never been a greater need for software that can support multiple brands and multiple entities than there is in the current ISP market space. Whether you're growing through acquisition or you need to separate your retail and commercial business for limited liability purposes,

12 October 2021

How to Reach New Customers and Increase Activations

Finding the right customers who are looking for or need your services requires precision. To attract customers, Internet Service Providers need to be able to reach their potential audience with accurate messaging.

08 September 2021

Transforming Data into Business Insights with Sonar's Business Intelligence Reporting

The foundation for future growth relies on accurate data insights to develop a robust and data-driven growth strategy to enhance the customer experience, drive operational efficiencies, leverage cost savings, and improve the bottom line.

30 August 2021

Performance Improvements

Have you ever read the release notes for a new piece of software or app? It's very common that, amongst the specific changes and improvements, that there will be a line saying something like various performance improvements. It's sometimes tempting to think this is just fluff added to fill out

13 August 2021

Quality of Experience Impact on Reducing Customer Churn

Analyzing data to improve the customer experience by prioritizing interactive traffic will directly impact reducing support calls and help significantly reduce churn. See how Preseem & Sonar help WISPs of all sizes utilize bandwidth efficiently.

09 August 2021

Cloud Security vs. On-Premise: Which is right for your ISP?

Cybersecurity is becoming a daily battle for many internet service providers. As cybercrime has become an undeniable threat, exploring solutions and potential cost, maintenance, compliance, and scalability for your growing business is vital.

08 June 2021

When to Outsource Customer Support & Why

Customer service is an essential part of your brand reputation and business growth. Without exceptional customer support, your company won't thrive, even if you have the best service and pricing in your area.

02 June 2021

How to Transform Your Field Operations with a Field Tech Mobile App

As Internet Service Providers expand their business, field operations can become more complex and less efficient. Scheduling jobs, managing invoices, and tracking inventory can become overwhelming if technicians arent equipped with the right tools.

28 April 2021

Why Customer Portals are the Future of Customer Satisfaction

Most Internet Service Providers use self-service customer portals for the same reasons, scalability, cost reduction, and enhanced customer experience.

22 April 2021

Scaling Timeseries Data

Timeseries data is a set of data points indexed in time order. We utilize timeseries data heavily in Sonar for network monitoring and bandwidth usage monitoring, as these are both situations where you are always going to view the data ordered by time.

15 March 2021

Don't let Legacy Systems Impede your Growth

While there are many areas in which legacy software can restrict growth, the two most pressing are scalability and security. Both these factors, among several others, are driving the movement to replace legacy software.

04 March 2021

How to Protect Your Data When an Employee Leaves

With each employee that leaves the company, the threat to your data security and privacy practices increases, and this isn’t only true for those that leave with malicious intent.

23 February 2021

10 Ways to Streamline Your Support Process

In today’s highly competitive environment, with multiple companies having near-identical offerings, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd; long gone are the days where having the best product or service in the market meant imminent success.

05 February 2021

Solving the Data Puzzle, How ISPs Can Leverage Data to Increase ARPU

Business Intelligence (BI) provides invaluable insights, allowing you to understand your customers’ usage and buying behaviors, so you can quickly discover cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

14 January 2021

Security & Advantages of Sonar in the Cloud

Cloud-based solutions, cloud-based security, and Software as a Service are all terms that grow increasingly more common and are quickly approaching being the primary way of conducting business. Learn how security works and the advantages of the cloud

13 October 2020

Provisioning Customers & Devices in Sonar

Whether you’re a new ISP or you’ve been serving customers for some time but want details about exactly what Sonar does for your connection type, this article should clarify the various methods Sonar offers of provisioning your clients & controlling their access to services.

02 October 2020

Building a Device Mapper

So, you want to contribute a device mapper to the Sonar poller. Great! Here’s a walk through on how to get started.

01 October 2020

Pulse, Polling, and PHP

Network monitoring is a necessary part of running any ISP. Just as we have to monitor our infrastructure to keep Sonar running smoothly, an ISP has to monitor their network to catch issues before they happen, or respond to outages.

29 September 2020

Being Cloud Native

Learn why Sonar runs in the cloud, and why we don’t (and can’t) offer the ability for it to be run locally, and why this is a good thing for you.

28 September 2020

Consuming the Sonar API

In the first three articles in this series, I walked you through how to use the API using GraphiQL, a web based tool included in Sonar. Now let’s build a very simple application so we can consume the API externally.

25 September 2020

Mutations in the Sonar API

In GraphQL, a mutation is something that changes data. Whether you’re creating, updating, or deleting, running a mutation will always cause data to be modified. Let’s jump into how mutations work.

23 September 2020

A Deeper Dive into the new Sonar API

In this article, I’m going to dive into the real power of this API and show you how to construct some complex, powerful queries.

21 September 2020

The New Sonar API

Welcome to the first part of the Sonar GraphQL API series. In this set of articles, I’ll teach you how to use the new, powerful GraphQL API that underlines Sonar, and show you all the amazing things you can do with it.

23 March 2020

Business Intelligence Reporting in Sonar, Official Release!

Most ISPs are manually pulling data into spreadsheets, building custom calculations and then exporting the data into pivot tables for analysis.

15 March 2020

Sonar & COVID-19

COVID-19: How Sonar is helping our partners In this time of uncertainty, the service that you, our ISP partners provide, has become paramount to the international effort to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus. We at Sonar recognize your networks will be stretched to capacity as more employees are

09 March 2020

COVID-19 announcement

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread within North America, Sonar Software Inc. has made the decision to temporarily suspend all non-essential employee travel.

19 October 2019

CEO Simon Westlake on The BrothersWISP

Interview with our CEO Simon Westlake on The BrothersWISP at Wispapalooza 2019, Las Vegas.

16 October 2019

Introducing the ALL NEW Powerful Sonar

Sonar’s fully reimagined software gives you the flexibility you need to expand your business freely. Say goodbye to outdated legacy systems, and build your own legacy of customer satisfaction & profit.

10 October 2019

Sonar Unveils The Future of ISP Billing and Management Software

“We’re no longer just a software company. We’re now partnering with all our customers in all their success...helping them with marketing and...are way more engaged”, said Simon Westlake, founder of Sonar Software. Westlake added, “We started over and threw out all the old code”.

27 September 2019

The Globe And Mail ranks Sonar No. 23, Canada’s Top Growing Companies

Sonar ranks No. 23 with three-year growth of 2,028% on the inaugural Report on Business ranking of Canada’s Top Growing Companies. We have had an exceptional year and we’re truly honored to be recognized by the Globe & Mail as one of Canada’s Top Growing Companies. This

12 September 2019

Sonar Software Inc. Ranks No. 11 on the 2019 Startup 50

Maclean’s today ranked Sonar Software Inc. No. 11 on the 2019 Startup 50 ranking of Canada’s Top New Growth Companies. Serving as a companion list to the longstanding Growth 500 ranking of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies

09 September 2019

Microsoft Airband Summit

Sonar's CEO Simon Westlake speaking at the Microsoft Airband Summit last week.

03 October 2018

We've partnered with Microsoft!

I'm very pleased to announce that we've partnered with Microsoft on their Airband project. Airband is an initiative that Microsoft has started to bring Internet access to 2 million unserved people in North America

01 October 2018

WISPAPALOOZA is almost here!

We'll be at WISPAPALOOZA [http://www.wispa.org/Events/WISPAPALOOZA-2018] in just a few days, and I hope to see many of you there. We're running a training session on Monday, and there's still time to register [https://goo.gl/forms/6AQ1TPGBKwCQolAe2]! We have some big announcements to make that

19 May 2018

Reduced support on Victoria & Memorial Day

Please note that our Canadian staff will observe Victoria Day on Monday, May 21 and our U.S. staff will observe Memorial Day on Monday, May 28th. Our support lines will remain open on both days. However, you might see a small increase in response time. We appreciate your patience

18 April 2018

Sonar 1.7 out now!

The big new feature in 1.7 is geofencing for scheduling

12 April 2018

Welcome to the latest Sonar team members!

I'm very happy to officially welcome two new members to the Sonar team - Shane MacDonald, previously Senior Accounts Manager at KP Performance, and Jimmy Thomson, previously Professional Services Manager at CDW.

18 March 2018

Sonar 1.6 coming soon!

here are many more improvements in 1.6, including streamlined Telrad provisioning, significantly improved map performance (especially for operators with 100k+ subscribers mapped), tons of new webhooks, search improvements, generation of the FCC form 477 voice report, and more.

01 February 2018

Joint Preseem/Sonar webinar

I'll be presenting a joint webinar with Preseem on February 13th - hope you can attend! The webinar will cover new features in Sonar 1.5, and how you can use Preseem along with Sonar to enforce Quality of Experience monitoring and queue management for your subscribers. Don't miss it

17 January 2018

Sonar 1.5 and Sonar 2.0

Sonar 1.5 is on the horizon, and it's got some goodies in it. The big new feature is an integration with Avalara, which enables automated tax calculation for any service in the US or Canada.

28 November 2017

The last few months

Things have been very hectic in the last few months since our WispMon acquisition! We've been hard at work migrating WispMon customers over to Sonar, but here's a few of the other things that we've accomplished.

26 September 2017

Our acquisition of WispMon

Sonar, an industry leader in ISP billing and OSS solutions, today announced that it has acquired WispMon, a prominent ISP billing and OSS platform targeting the fixed wireless industry.

14 August 2017

NuTEQ completes integration with Sonar

GOCare™ is a cloud-based, fully-integrated solution enabling proactive and interactive communications with the subscriber via their mobile device. Increased competition heightens the need for differentiation and enhanced customer experiences.

23 July 2017

Sonar 1.4 out today!

Integrated provisioning for Baicells and Mimosa. Integration with Preseem. New Procera Session Context integration.

07 July 2017

Sonar 0.6 now available!

Sonar 0.6 is now available, bringing data usage tracking, usage based billing, a completely customizable customer portal, and much, much, much more. This is one of our largest updates ever, and there's lots more to come.

19 June 2017

Automatic network mapping

Sonar 1.4 is coming soon, and the new major feature we'll be releasing is our automatic network mapping module.

05 June 2017

Sonar 1.3 out today!

Sonar 1.3 is out today, bringing a wealth of billing improvements. You can check out the entire list here.

25 May 2017

Sonar 1.3 is almost here!

Sonar 1.3 is just a couple of weeks away from completion, and we can't wait to share it with you. 1.3 is our billing overhaul update and contains a number of new, exciting features.

22 May 2017

Sonar Training at WISPAPALOOZA 2017

training is designed for existing Sonar users, and will go over advanced used cases in every module of Sonar.

17 April 2017

Provisioning coming next week!

Sonar 0.4 is almost out, bringing multiple provisioning options to your network - check out the whole video series!

10 March 2017

New site is now live!

The new Sonar website is now live - hope you like it! We decided it was time for a refresh, and there's lots of new information available, including a page on our Procera partnership.

22 February 2017

Procera + Sonar = The Ultimate Solution

the Procera + Sonar solution brings a cost effective and highly scalable solution to all our customers, large or small. Running on COTS Dell servers, this solution offers a small up front cost in hardware, and a simple, per-subscriber pricing model.

16 January 2017

Roadmap for 2017

Sonar reached version 1.0 at the end of 2016. On our path towards 1.0, we've brought over 150 ISPs around the world onto the Sonar platform, and we're looking forward to the next 150!

21 December 2016

Sonar 1.0 is near

Sonar 1.0 will be in your hands next week, and there's a new video series available that walks you through the features of the network monitoring and alerting module. I encourage you to check it out!

30 November 2016

Sonar 1.0 is almost here!

The primary module coming in 1.0 is our network monitoring module, but there's tons of new features packed in, including a major UI upgrade, that has increased the speed of many complex interfaces by 50% or more!

16 September 2016

ServerPlus Integration

I'm happy to announce our integration with ServerPlus. ServerPlus already provides call center services to a number of ISPs that use Sonar, and this integration will assist in making these services more valuable and efficient.

06 August 2016

Voice billing available!

Sonar 0.6.11 will be out later today, and it brings support for billing for voice services and rating CDRs. As always, there is a video seriesdescribing how it works!

15 June 2016

Sonar ticketing now available!

The Sonar ticketing update is available now - click the Upgrade button in your Sonar instance and you'll be ticketing to your heart's content in just a couple of minutes.

08 June 2016

Sonar 0.5 is almost here!

Sonar 0.5 is almost here, bringing a complete ticketing system to Sonar, along with many other improvements and changes

06 March 2016

What a fantastic show!

Hope you had a chance to check out our huge touchscreen - it was a lot of fun and very interesting watching people interact with Sonar for the first time.

02 March 2016

Please join me in welcoming Glenn Moore to Sonar.

Glenn brings 35 years of successful business experience to the table. His experience spans multiple industries, ranging from agricultural equipment to the communications industry, as well as positions on numerous boards. He has been a member of both WISPA and CANWISP for many years

25 February 2016

See you at WISP America!

We'll be at WISP America Mar 15-17, showing off Sonar 0.4 in a very cool way. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but it'll be worth stopping by our booth to check out our display!

13 February 2016

Inventory is almost here!

Sonar version 0.4 is already underway, and will bring a flexible IPv4 and IPv6 IPAM (IP address management) system, as well as a number of options for provisioning. The Sonar provisioning system is already very flexible and configurable

10 February 2016

We're on Github!

The import tool in our repository is just the first step. As we build more features into Sonar, we'll continue to build on this import tool, and we have a lot more coming in the future. If there's anything you'd like to see, please share it on our forum.

10 December 2015

Early access begins!

We officially began letting people into early access this week, and the feedback has been tremendous. Thanks to everyone who's contributed input to and followed Sonar over the last few months - we're just getting rolling!

15 October 2015

Our Partners

The WISP community is filled with companies providing a wide range of quality services and products and one of the strengths of the community is the spirit of cooperation.

29 September 2015

Announcing Sonar

This rapid pace of innovation is driving the need for better software. To keep up, you want a platform that can scale, you want a platform that can provision and integrate with any manufacturer, and you want a platform that you can reliably grow with.