This site is managed by the Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa (DIAA) and is intended for partner organisations delivering programmes endorsed and/or supported by DIAA. Currently this includes the following programmes:
Stepping UP
JUMP
DORA
Better Digital Futures for Seniors
Appy Seniors
Digital Wellbeing for All
The blog aims to address mainly operational issues associated with the delivery of these digital inclusion programmes. It provides a repository of information dealing with specific questions raised by programme delivery partners.
Two partners have raised really interesting questions this week about how to deploy Jump for older people who would have difficulty managing a pre-pay account. Both have been attracted by the low cost pricing structure for Jump and they definitely qualify.
What the people caring for both these older people want is a “set and forget” option in terms of managing ongoing payments and plan renewals. Personally, I think these two older people represent the tip of a growing iceberg – the big D or dementia iceberg.
Case 1: Social worker working with an older woman to try and get her a phone she can use. This enterprising social worker had discovered a phone (in Australia) that she thought would do the trick – AUS$110.
Big buttons, even family pictures with auto dial. So she was then wondering how to organise some automatic billing for a Jump connection.
Alarm bells starting ring!
Skinny Jump does not support normal voice calls; the device she has in mind would need a fibre or copper fixed line connection. She could of course make voice or video calls using WhatsApp or other internet-based services, like Facetime on Apple devices. But this makes things much more complicated than a device where you just push a button to call family or friends.
The next alarm bell comes with the need for a ‘set and forget’ prepay billing arrangement. She could use an auto top-up option to add funds to her Skinny account when the balance gets low, but Jump does not support ‘auto plan renewals’ or ‘set and forget’ options. So she would still be faced with have to login to her account and select a new plan when she needed her next 35GB.
Case 2: Request from a support worker from a supported living organisation for a resident who could not manage the top-up / plan renewal process
The downside of pre-pay services like Skinny Jump for people in this sort of situation is that it is not a ‘set and forget’ service (unless it is someone with a very low data usage, who can live on the free 15GB a month). We have encountered situations where a family member takes responsibility for setting up the account and managing the top-ups and plan renewals – even when they live in another country! But I am not sure a support worker would want to do this.
The solution here is to identify who is going to be responsible for top-ups; they need to take responsibility for setting up the account and linking to the modem with their email. All the person using the service needs to do then is plug the modem in and connect their device to wifi, which I am sure is something support workers could help with.
So thank you to the two partners who raised these issues and for going the extra mile in trying to help. I’d love to hear how things develop with your two customers and their social/support workers.
I received a comment from Steven Price at Community Support Waitakere on my recent post about the Chorus Equity Fibre product that is so cool I felt I had to share this.
I wonder how many rolled their eyes when I started talking about schools with an equity index of 490+. Whatever happened to the decile rankings for schools – most of us could understand rankings on a 1-10 scale, but that’s progress I guess – a more refined way for the Ministry of Education to allocate funding to schools.
But Steven has completely demystified this for me, and for you I hope.
Using publicly available information, he has created and shared a Google Map that displays NZ Schools, including their EQI and other details. Here’s a sample, where the ‘greens’ represent schools that meet Chorus’ Equity Fibre criteria.
Some Jump partners have been approached by parties involved in the delivery of the new Chorus-supported service and are wondering how this impacts the delivery of Jump.
We know this been in the works for some time and we welcome any internet service provider able to provide ‘affordable’ internet. Affordable internet is defined as broadband services that cost consumers no more that $30 a month.
Jump has been delivering affordable internet for 10 years (yes it is Jump’s 10th birthday this year!). But I digress – let me tell you what I know about the new Chorus product. Natalie Lawson is the Social Impact Lead for Chorus, and she been very helpful explaining this new service to us.
But first, just a word about Chorus and how they differ from Skinny, for example. Chorus is the largest Local Fibre Company (LFC) in New Zealand, providing about 70% of the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) network infrastructure. LFCs operate as open-access network owners, meaning they build the physical infrastructure and sell wholesale services to retail internet providers (like Skinny or Spark), rather than directly to consumers.
Chorus’ wholesale product ‘Equity Fibre 100’ is retail capped at $30 a month, delivering fibre broadband at 100/20 Mbps. The product is designed to support low-income households in public or community housing or lower-decile school communities who have an inactive fibre connection, and who can show eligibility through a Community Services Card or MSD benefit letter.
The really good news about this product is that it is ‘unlimited’, i.e. there is no data cap. However, the product is focused on households that have inactive fibre connections – these are ones where fibre infrastructure has been installed but where families can’t afford a commercial fibre plan.
The product is delivered by retail service providers (RSPs) – currently there are 4 RSPs offering this new product (see image below from Chorus’ website), but Chorus says they have more in the wings.
So how will this product fit in with Skinny Jump?
We recognise that Jump doesn’t suit every household, e.g. large households with many internet users, where the Jump data cap of 225GB simply isn’t enough, and of course for families in high density housing areas where the 4G cell towers are at capacity. In the 4 months to date this year, we have had to turn away over 130 customers because of no cell tower capacity.
I am particularly excited about how the Chorus service could impact social housing tenants. Many social housing complexes have been ‘fibred-up’, but few tenants have been able to afford a fibre connection. We know of one social housing complex with 200 apartments where over 120 have a Jump connection – purely because this has been the only affordable service. My telecommunications engineering background makes me cringe to think of this – when fixed infrastructure like fibre makes so much more technical sense.
What do we expect from Jump Delivery partners?
The launch of this fibre product could not only help to plug some gaps where Jump is not available or suitable, but also gives partners some more choice when discussing what is most suitable for your customers. So our goal is to help you understand this product and assist your customers make good decisions.
At this stage there are quite a few eligibility barriers that customers will face and they will need your help to navigate these – Chorus explains these on their website:
Fortunately some of the retail providers have good online tools that you can use with your customers to navigate these criteria. Check out this one on Vetta.
And how can you find out whether the schools that your customers’ children go to has an equity index of 490+? You can check it out here.
We are producing an information module for all our Stepping UP partners to help you explain this to your customers, so watch this space. But the important takeaway is that unlike for Jump where you help customers actually connect to the service, all we are hoping that Stepping UP partners can do is where appropriate help customers work through the eligibility criteria for Equity Fibre 100 and then refer them to one of the participating RSPs – they will handle the sign up and service delivery.
Thank you to partners who make the extra effort to complete a Profile Form for customers who are unable to get Jump because of limited coverage or capacity on their cell tower.
We have just re-checked coverage for applications received in recent months and discovered 21 out of 42 now have coverage. 3 of these asked us to cancel their application if they were not in coverage, while 18 gave us approval to contact them should things change.
So that is what we have done this morning – sent 18 emails to these customers. Two bounced because of bad email addresses, but nothing much we can do about that.
This is the content of the email template that we used to send these messages:
Kia ora {{ First Name }} Good news! Your address now has Jump coverage. If you are still interested in this service, please contact your nearest Jump Delivery Partner – you can find nearby partners by typing your address into the Skinny Jump Address Checker. The details we have for your application on {{ Timestamp }} are:{{ First Name }} {{ Last Name }}{{ Street address (where Jump service is required) }}{{ Suburb }}{{ City or Town }} {{ Post Code }}E: {{ Email Address }}M: {{ Contact phone number }} Best wishes DIAA Jump Operations
So if someone turns up saying ‘Hey, I am now in coverage’, please sign them up. The partners involved with this mailout are listed below. When I work out how to include a cc copy in Mail Meteor, I’ll include relevant partners in future mailouts.
As at the start of May we have reached 271 new families signed up for the Ciena plan since the start of the year. So the clock is ticking for our 2026 target of 350.
The good news of course is that it’s not too late to sign families up for this amazing sponsored plan – free internet for the rest of the school year!
There’s a lot of talk about ‘affordable’ internet and research has revealed that $30 a month is the limit for many households. This is not news to the Skinny team, who set this cap 10 years ago (6 plan renewals x $5 = $30, for those who skipped maths at school).
But if $30 is affordable, what is $0? With 8 months left of 2026, the Ciena package can save families up to $240! (8 x $30 = $240). Now I am sure there are a lot of things families could do with an extra $240 in their pockets.
So roll on up – keep those Ciena referrals flowing.
Pātea is famous for two things. One is world famous and the other, well, perhaps less famous outside Pātea.
Let’s start with the most famous thing – Poi E!—a groundbreaking Māori-language hit created in the early 1980s by the Pātea Māori Club. Written by Dalvanius Prime and performed by local community members, the song fused traditional Māori culture with contemporary pop and hip-hop influences at a time when te reo Māori was rarely heard in mainstream music. Its national success—topping the charts in 1984—helped revitalise pride in Māori language and identity, while also putting the small Taranaki town of Pātea firmly on the cultural map. Today, Poi E! remains an iconic symbol of grassroots creativity and cultural resurgence, and Pātea is closely associated with its enduring legacy.
Well that’s what everyone knows! What you might not know unless you live in Pātea is that for many years there has been no broadband capacity on the local cell tower. So much so that this has been Sue Kini’s reliable ‘go to’ place when explaining the ‘no coverage’ message that partners sometimes see when checking coverage for a Skinny Jump customer.
But last week this all changed and for the first time in many years the coverage checker returned this message for a Pātea address:
So of course the moral of this story is “never say never” when you have to say no to a potential Jump customer. Encourage them to check their address from time to time for coverage and they might receive a nice surprise. The address checker is updated every night, so things can change overnight, or as we have seen in Pātea, this can take some time.
PS for the Pātea LibraryPlus team: Can you remember the people you have had to turn down; perhaps let them know it might be worth checking their address again before the internet in Pātea becomes as popular as Poi e!
I am sure you are all wondering who won the Ciena competition. Earlier this week Mel and Sareen from the Skinny Jump team at Spark paid a visit to Albany Village Library to deliver some Jump goody bags.
Albany Village Library is one of the 58 Jump Delivery Partners who have signed up one or more families for the Ciena programme since the beginning of the year. Together, these Jump partners have supported a total of 255 new families to date. Ciena has agreed to sponsor 350 new families in 2026, so there still room for more.
You might be wondering how Albany Village Library was picked. Well this was a totally random process – as at 31 March, 216 new families had signed up, so we used a random number generator to select a number between 1 and 216 and the partner who signed up this family was the winner.
The Skinny Jump team has advised that the issue reported yesterday has been found and fixed. They confirmed this by running a test and have managed to successfully progress through (see below)
Step 01: Enter your email address
Step 02: Set a password
Their advice for Partners/Customers:
Close Jump App
Check to ensure both app (via Playstore / App Store) and system software are up to date (via device Settings)
Reopen app and continue Sign Up process
They also reminded us of other Useful Resources if you encounter problems with the app – Jump App Cheat Sheet that is available on the SteppingUP website, here.
One of our Jump partners has reported a problem in signing up customers with the Jump app. They are getting the following error message:
The Skinny Jump squad has been able to replicate this error for both Android and Apple signups and have escalated the issue. In the meantime, their advice is to use the web browser signup process. They have confirmed this is still working as expected.
However, the partner who reported the problem is still experiencing a sign-up problem using this approach as well. Mel from the Skinny Jump team has advised: “I tried earlier and it worked and tried again just now to ‘Create a new account’/Register via desktop web browser and its worked and allowed me to progress through to enter First and Last name? You might need to clear cache, try incognito or different browser.”
Duncan Philps from Onehunga Library asked this interesting question recently and it’s just possible that some other Jump partners might also have similar lingering thoughts.
Let me restate a few facts about this while answering Duncan’s question.
A customer contacts you and wants to sign up for Jump. What’s the first thing you do? Check their address has Jump coverage of course. And then you have to deal with a disappointed customer when you get this message:
FACT ONE: No coverage doesn’t necessarily mean ‘no coverage’: First thing to note is the small print, explaining what “No coverage” means. Nine times out of ten, it doesn’t actually mean there is no coverage, as the 4G network is very widespread and it is quite rare to discover a location with no wireless coverage. Most of the time it means that it is a capacity issue, i.e. the address is an area that has reached the maximum number of modems that can be connected to the nearest cell tower. The reason for capping the number of connections is to preserve an acceptable standard of service for existing customers; adding too many connections will degrade the service for everyone served from that tower.
FACT TWO: Cellphone towers radiate in three 120 degree sectors: Your customer might then want you to explain “how come then that my neighbour has coverage”, or “I tested my neighbour’s Jump modem in my house and it worked!” Click on the even smaller print in the “We’re sorry” message and you’ll end up here. You should also have copies of a DL pamphlet explaining cell tower coverage; you can find a link here to order more if you have run out.
FACT THREE: The Skinny Jump coverage checker is updated every night: The number of broadband customers connected to any cell tower can vary every day, so that a coverage check the next day or later in the same week could give the green light for a new connection. Customers can also move to other wireless service providers or a fibre connection, freeing up space on the Skinny tower.
FACT FOUR: For customers without coverage, completing an Online Application Form or a Profile Form does not guarantee a Jump connection: We introduced these options for partners primarily to help diffuse difficult situations with angry customers who cannot walk out the door with a Jump modem.
FACT FIVE: Capturing the details of ‘no coverage’ customers enables us (DIAA) to double-check coverage/capacity at the customer’s address: We do this when processing both the online applications and the profile forms. Sometimes we get a pleasant surprise and discover that capacity has become available and will contact the customer directly to see if they still want a Jump connection. But it is quite rare to get a positive result straight away. We check these addresses three to four weeks after receiving the ‘no coverage’ application and advise the customer by email of the result. We do not automatically do any further checks, which is why we advise customers to check themselves periodically, and many do this.
FACT SIX: Skinny does not contact Jump applicants who complete a ‘no coverage’ response on an Online Application or Jump Profile form when capacity becomes available: Skinny does not have access to individual customer information on either the Online Application of Jump Profile forms. The Skinny team uses the same address checker that we do.
FACT SEVEN: Capturing ‘no coverage’ addresses helps us inform Spark of Skinny Jump blackspots: We aggregate the data from the ‘no coverage’ responses to identify areas where there are many people waiting for Jump and share this data with Spark. That said, we have no influence on how Spark prioritises their investments in further 4G cell tower capacity. We know they have made significant investments in 5G infrastructure and we hope that as customers migrate to 5G, this will free up more 4G capacity for Jump.
PS: Duncan – I hope this addresses your questions.
Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa 