How to grow a home broadband business with MikroTik and PPPoE

Hotspots collect small payments from people on the street. Home broadband (PPPoE, the login most home internet uses) is the other half of the business: monthly subscriptions from homes and offices, delivered by wireless link or fibre, at TZS 35,000 to 80,000 per home per month.

Doing it by hand is what breaks operators: unpaid customers left online, technicians cutting people off one by one, and payments written in a notebook.

1. What you need

• Radios on a towerWide-angle radios (90° or 120°) on a central tower, sending the signal out to the homes around it.
• A small radio on each roofA dish or panel on every customer's roof, pointed at your tower.
• A MikroTik router for loginsA dedicated router where every customer logs in, with Gridix Billing deciding who is allowed online.

2. The real problem: plans nobody switches off

• Free ridersA customer whose month ended five days ago is still online because nobody opened the router's settings.
• Wasted technician timeStaff spend their day switching accounts on and off and arguing about receipts.
• No way to pay aloneA customer who wants to pay at 10pm on a Sunday cannot, so they leave.

3. What the platform does for you

• Plans that end on timeWhen a plan ends, the customer is disconnected by the system. There is no list of accounts to remember to switch off.
• Renewal from the phoneThe customer pays with mobile money and is back online without anyone touching the router.
• Reminders before the plan endsSMS messages go out before the renewal date, which is far cheaper than winning back a customer who left.
• A speed for every packageEach package has its own speed, applied when the customer connects, so you never set speeds by hand.

4. Example monthly numbers

Again, this is a worked example and not a forecast. What it shows is where the profit is won: money collected on time, and speed you are not giving away to expired accounts.