Ucopia France

The TER (Train Express Régional) connects the Senegalese capital Dakar with Blaise Diagne International Airport — a route of about 55 kilometres covered in under an hour. Travellers are diverse: local commuters, international business travellers, tourists, diplomats. The on-board language is not only French (the official administrative language of Senegal), but also English and, regionally, Wolof.

What travellers expect: WiFi that works, that's in their language, and where signing in isn't a hurdle. What the operators want to add: clear transport-operator branding and differentiated treatment for VIP travellers, who form a dedicated class on the express service.

A standard Ucopia portal template would have been enough to provide WiFi — but not enough to handle these three aspects (localisation, branding, VIP differentiation) properly.

An adapted captive portal on Ucopia WiFi controller, extending the standard portal structure without leaving it.

Multilingual frontend with French as the primary language

French dominates as Senegal's official administrative language — the portal shows French content as default. [TO CLARIFY: exact language list, whether English was included, whether Wolof is integrated as a regional language?] The portal code is built on HTML and JavaScript and uses the Ucopia API for authentication.

VIP user management as separate logic

Express-class travellers get different access from standard travellers. [TO CLARIFY: what differentiates VIP from standard — separate tariff packages, longer sessions, priority bandwidth, separate login flow?] The differentiation is visible in the portal and runs through the Ucopia API.

Custom design for the transport operator

The portal carries the TER operator's branding — no generic Ucopia layout. Colours, logos, typography, and imagery are adapted to the transport operator's appearance, so the WiFi experience is perceived as part of the travel service, not as a technical add-on.

Deployment on Debian Linux infrastructure

As with the other Ucopia-based projects, the solution runs on Debian Linux within the operational scope of Ucopia France. The customisations are packaged so they run on the existing infrastructure without a separate server stack.

• WiFi without a language barrier for the international clientele on the express service.
• VIP class gets differentiated WiFi treatment — matching the tariff promise of the express class.
• Transport operators have a WiFi branding asset that acts as part of their service experience.
• The solution integrates with existing Ucopia infrastructure — no second operations layer.

• We don't operate the Ucopia controller. Operational responsibility stays with Ucopia France.
• We don't supply WiFi hardware. Access points and backbone connectivity belong to the transport operator and their network partner.
• We don't manage VIP classification on the content side. Who's VIP and who isn't is decided by the operator's tariff and booking system.
• We don't run our own multilingual translation system. Translations were fixed at implementation time. [TO CLARIFY: how are updates maintained — by evanto, by Ucopia, by local partners?]

The setup works wherever an existing captive portal infrastructure (Ucopia or equivalent) needs local adaptation — transport operators in emerging and developing markets, international services with language and regulatory specifics, locations with clear tariff-class differentiation (economy / business / VIP), or sites with limited local internet connectivity.

The pattern: captive portal on existing Ucopia infrastructure → local language and regulatory adaptation → tariff or class-specific logic (e.g. VIP) → operator branding → deployment within the network partner's operational scope, without our own hardware.

The TER Dakar solution has been in production since 2020. It shows: even in infrastructure contexts with limited local resources, demanding captive portal features can be delivered — when the customisations sit on a proven base.