Your questions, our answers

WiNet is a pan-African platform, open in thirteen countries, that turns a WiFi router into a point of sale for Internet access. You plug a MikroTik router into your connection, WiNet configures it, and your customers buy their own access on a dedicated page. The money from those sales lands in your zone balance, and you transfer it to your Mobile Money whenever you want.

Four things: a MikroTik router, an Internet connection already working on site, an email address to create your account, and a Mobile Money number in your own name to receive the money. Stable power, or a small backup battery, is the difference between a zone that sells in the evening and a zone that is switched off.

The software side is fast: the account takes a minute, the zone and the bundles a few minutes, and enrolling the router takes anywhere from a few dozen seconds to a few minutes. What takes time is the physical work: mounting the antenna, running the cable, testing coverage. Allow half a day for a first installation done without rushing.

No, an individual can open a manager account and run a zone. It is up to you, however, to follow the rules that apply to your activity and your trade, as with any other kind of sale. If you run several zones or work with third parties, tell us about your project and we will point you in the right direction.

Yes, that is what it is built for. Each zone keeps its own bundles, its own portal, its own sales and its own balance, but they all appear in the same app. You switch from one to the other in a single tap, and the dashboard shows you where your revenue is coming from. See the Businesses & local ISPs page for large-scale deployments.

Not yet, on neither one — better to say so plainly than let you go looking. What exists today is the web version: open app.winetapp.org in Chrome or Safari, on Android and on iPhone alike, and add the page to your home screen to find it again like an ordinary app.

The installable Android app is ready and its release on Google Play is being prepared; in the meantime we send you the installation file by email on request. The iPhone version is being built and has no date yet. All three cases are detailed on the Manager App page.

They connect to the zone's WiFi and the portal opens on its own. They pick a bundle and pay with the mobile money of their country — MTN or Orange in Cameroon, M-Pesa in Kenya, Airtel in Uganda, Wave in Senegal; a confirmation request arrives on their phone — or by bank card through a hosted payment page. As soon as the payment is confirmed, their access opens and the sale shows up on your side.

You are entirely free to decide. Three useful markers: stay with two or three bundles so you do not overwhelm the customer, prefer round amounts that are easy to pay in Mobile Money, and start by matching what is charged in your neighbourhood before adjusting after a week of watching results. A bundle can be changed at any time.

Yes. The portal shows your zone name, your logo, your main colour, an advertising image and your WhatsApp number. The BASIC template covers all of that, and the BUSINESS, CAMPUS, CAFE_HOTEL and EVENT templates offer more elaborate layouts. All of them are free.

You choose whichever unit suits you. Volume is entered in MB or GB, duration in hours or days, and speed is always set in Mbit/s (decimals are accepted, for example 1.5 Mbit/s). The app remembers the unit you used and shows the bundle back exactly as you thought of it — “2 GB · 3 days · 5 Mbit/s”. Neither you nor your customer ever sees raw minutes or kbit/s.

Yes, your bundles can be changed at any time from the app. Removing a bundle from the portal does not cut off access already sold: the customers who bought it run out their time as normal. That makes it safe to test a price for a few days, then go back if the result does not follow.

At the customer's first connection, never at purchase. If you sell a voucher “valid 7 days” on a Monday and the customer only uses it on Wednesday, their seven days run from Wednesday. That is what the customer expects, and it is what you can explain at the counter without contradicting yourself.

Validity in days is a property of the bundle, which you decide when you create it. A bundle with no validity in days is still possible: it simply will not have a date-based expiry.

Three things, one after the other: the code is deleted from the router, the session in progress is cut, and the small file that let the phone reconnect automatically is erased. That last point is what makes the difference: without it, a device can get back online by itself without ever typing the code again. To carry on, the customer has to buy again.

Yes. The expiry rule is enforced by the router itself, not from our servers. While your operator is down you stop selling — the portal needs Internet to take payment — but no expired code becomes usable again during that time. When the link comes back, the app updates itself.

One thing not to confuse: this does not mean WiNet works offline. Selling needs a connection; enforcing what has already been sold does not.

No. On the first connection, the code binds to the phone using it. After that, the same code no longer works on another device: a customer who gives it to five neighbours gives them nothing. That is the most common revenue leak in the voucher model, and it is closed.

A consequence to know before you answer an unhappy customer: if they change phone in the middle of a bundle, their code will not follow them.

It does not expire in your drawer. As long as a code has never been used, its countdown has not started: you can print it today and sell it next month. It is precisely because validity starts from the first connection, and not from generation, that paper stock costs you nothing.

By default a code is short and it is the only thing the customer has to type: no separate password, a single field on the portal. Characters that look alike in print are left out: no 0 and no o, no 1, no l and no i. A code can therefore be read off a crumpled piece of paper, dictated over the phone and retyped without error on the keyboard of an entry-level device. This format is a default, not an obligation: see the next question.

You generate up to a hundred at a time, which matches one printable sheet. Each voucher carries the zone name, the bundle name exactly as you wrote it, what it contains, its price, and the code the customer will type to connect.

Yes, and it is set zone by zone. You choose the length of the code, its character set — letters and digits without ambiguous characters, or digits only, faster to type on a phone — and whether the customer enters a single code or a separate username and password. It is most useful when you take over a hotspot already in service: your customers find exactly the code format they know.

Two limits to know. WiNet refuses settings that are too weak, because a code that is too short can be guessed — anyone connected to the zone's WiFi can try them one by one. The minimum length depends on the character set you choose (you need more with digits only), and the app tells you the value to use at the moment you set it. And a format change only applies to vouchers generated afterwards: your stock already printed keeps working.

Yes, from the zone's list of connected customers. And when you cut them off, the device does not come back online by itself a second later: the session and the automatic reconnection are removed together.

Yes, and you are the one who chooses them: “Day pass”, “Unlimited night”, “Student bundle”. The name appears on the portal the customer sees, and it prints on the paper voucher. A bundle you can name is a bundle your customers end up asking for by name.

That is exactly what it was designed for: the page is deliberately very light, with no external resource to load, so it appears quickly on a modest device and a slow network. If a customer does not see the portal, the cause is almost always mobile data left switched on, or an old connection remembered by their phone.

With your email address and your password, or with your Google account. When you sign up, a 6-digit code is sent to your address to verify it: without that code, the account is not activated. There is no sign-in by phone number — your Mobile Money number is used only to receive your payouts.

Check the junk mail folder first, then check that the address you entered has no typo. Then ask for a new one to be sent: the previous code stops being valid at that point. If nothing arrives after several attempts, write to us from the address concerned and we will look at what is blocking it.

No. Accounts are kept separate: a manager sees only their own zones, their sales and their balance. Your data is not shared with other users, and it is not used for advertising purposes. The detail is in our privacy policy.

You can ask at any time, without giving a reason and without penalty. First withdraw the remaining balance to your Mobile Money, then follow the procedure described on the Delete my account page. Your router stays with you: it belongs to you.