View balance SMS in InControl

I have deployed 100+ Pepwave MAX BR1 routers around the world. I want to setup 3G/4G failover second to the primary connection over Ethernet or Wi-Fi. And want to enable Speed Fusion to support hot failover.

However, monitoring those SIM cards balance is a headache. These SIMs have prepaid plan. The prepaid plan must be topup properly. To monitor their balance, I have to use InControl Remote WebAdmin to send SMS/USSD for balance check, very tedious to repeat the steps for 100+ routers.

I want to raise a feature request: Collects SMS received by MAX BR1 and show SMS from all routers in a InControl page.

Hello,

I understand your request, but I wonder if a setting within the device would be better?

We currently have a notification alert which can be set once a SIM uses a certain percentage of it’s monthly data allowance. However, if you were able to enter the “credit” limit (in Mb or Gb) perhaps a notification once 25% of the credit remains, then another alert at 10% remaining?

This way you would only need to react once the notifications were received from the individual devices, rather than monitoring the usage via InControl.

It would be useful for others to post their thoughts here.

Thanks,

Steve

Hi Steve,

Is there already such a feature that sends notification based on usage? This is actually a better idea.

All of our prepaid SIMs has a plan restricted by usage and period. For example, 1GB data for 1 month or 5GB for 6 month. If I can enter such information: 1. data limit 2. expiration date in InControl, then get a notification when either data usage or date is approaching the limit. This would be a great great (great times X) helpful feature. I believe others who have lots of data SIMs on prepaid plan would also love this feature.

Regarding SMS, it’s still good to be able to read incoming SMS for

  1. confirm the topup is successful
  2. monitor if there is a promotion
  3. monitor other messages from the mobile operator
    But it is less important if the notification works as I described above.

What do you think?

Hi,

Sorry, this feature doesn’t currently exist. I was looking for your opinion, would you prefer this feature to be an extension of something already available - currently you can enable “Bandwidth Allowance Monitor” but this feature is for SIMS with fixed monthly allowances, which renew on the same day each month.

The problem with using USSD commands, is I believe these vary between providers and Country. Therefore, it would be difficult to capture all USSD codes across all providers across multiple countries to produce a single report in IC2 with the information you have requested.

Thanks,

Steve

I think “bandwidth allowance monitor” could help to some extend but not all cases.

I’ve seen more cases, if not all, data plan are on 30 days or 180 days limit. Specify start day of each month doesn’t work very well.

Secondly, setup an SMTP server and make the firewall open to public internet (BR1 uses 3G/4G doesn’t have fixed public IP) is a concern. It will be a difficult case if ever possible to get the approval from my corporate IT/Security team. Usually the corporation SMTP servers have mutual trust, but in my case our SMTP server must trust all devices behind the 100+ routers. Does this make sense to you?

Finally, “Bandwidth Allowance Monitor” doesn’t provide an overview and central management interface.

Forgot to mention, I don’t see why USSD is involved in the monitor case, because I am not after active check the balance. All mobile operators send low credit warning SMS.

I don’t need to monitor SMS, if I had a good notification feature like I described,