Announcing Shiftnet V25 — the next generation of community internet billing
One dashboard for hotspots and broadband. Authentication in the cloud. Mobile money that renews service on its own. And a network designed so that providers, agents and whole communities earn from it. V25 is coming soon — here's what it brings.
Running an internet business in East Africa usually means running three or four systems at once: one tool that prints hotspot vouchers, a separate box in the office doing RADIUS, a spreadsheet for the broadband customers, and a phone full of mobile money messages that someone has to reconcile by hand at the end of the week.
Shiftnet V25 is our answer to all of that — the biggest release we've ever shipped, and the foundation for everything we're building next.
#01One dashboard for the whole network
V25 brings hotspot vouchers and monthly PPPoE broadband together in a single dashboard. Sell time-based Wi-Fi codes at the market and manage monthly home-fibre customers on the same screen, with revenue from both flowing into one wallet — split by branch and by site, so you always know which location is actually making money.
Voucher batches print with your router's profile names on them. Broadband customers get real PPPoE credentials, speed packages, and upgrades or downgrades without a support call.
#02RADIUS lives in the cloud now
Authentication is the part of this industry that breaks the most — an old PC in the office running a RADIUS server that nobody wants to touch. In V25, central RADIUS is built into the platform. You plug in your MikroTik, run one generated script, and your router is authenticating users against our infrastructure.
When a customer's plan expires, the platform disconnects the session itself. When they pay, it reconnects them. No office server, no manual user lists on the router.
#03Money that moves itself
V25 treats mobile money as a first-class citizen, not an add-on. A broadband customer pays with MoMo and their service renews and reconnects automatically — no screenshot sent to a WhatsApp group, no admin logging in at midnight. Every payment lands in a ledger that reconciles to the shilling, with a withdrawable balance you can actually trust.
#04A network that pays everyone
This is the part we care about most. Shiftnet isn't just billing software — it's built on the idea that a community network should create income for the community that runs it.
- Agents earn with you. Local agents get their own portal, sell codes in their neighbourhoods, and every sale and commission is attributed and tracked automatically.
- Your captive portal earns. With adverts on your hotspot login page, the screen your users already see becomes a second income stream — advertisers pay to reach real local audiences, and providers take a share.
#05Routers that report in
V25 ships with a guided onboarding wizard that takes a factory-fresh MikroTik to fully configured in minutes, plus companion apps for Android and desktop. Once connected, routers report back continuously: live status, per-port ethernet telemetry, and alerts the moment something goes down — so you know a site is offline before your customers tell you.
#Where this is going
V25 is stage three of a longer journey. Hotspot billing came first. Broadband followed. Now the ad network is in build — and beyond it, a creative gig marketplace and localized learning, all under one Shiftnet account.
Built for providers. Powered by community. Everyone earns.
Shiftnet V25 is launching soon
Follow this blog and shiftnet.africa for the release announcement.
Coming Soon