Custom TCP Monitor

I am a bit of a newbie to BASH. So, I am running into trouble encoding the input properly into my script. Mind if you help me set it up correctly? Here is what I have so far:

  
 !/bin/bash  
 ip=`echo ${1} | sed 's/::ffff://'`  
 port=${2}  
 input="FDCB^_^@^@^@Service=RC_SERVICE^^Command=Ping^@^@^@^@"  
 output=$(echo $input | nc $ip $port -w 5)  
 if [[ $output == *BusinessCode* ]]  
 then echo "UP"  
 fi  
 

When executed, the script waits 1-2 seconds and then pushes nothing to output. After echoing back the input and output variables, it seems the input variable is not being encoded properly. How do I properly encode the extended ASCII chars into a BASH variable?