Watch out for the “86” IMEI trap!

A number of families, when completing their JUMP Kawa of Care online form, are falling into the trap of repeating the leading “86” in the IMEI number.  These two digits auto-fill in the Kawa of Care form and there is no need for families to re-enter “86”.  When families do enter it, they are unable to enter the last two digits of the IMEI number, as the field is limited to a total of 15 digits.  This makes it difficult, and at times impossible, to uniquely identify the family’s modem.

To mitigate this problem we have recommended to Spark Foundation that the auto-fill feature is removed, but until this happens can you remind families when completing their Kawa of Care not to enter the leading “86”.  One other thing you can do to help is to always enter the family’s name in columns B and C of the Google sheet (yellow shaded columns).  We can then advise Spark Foundation of the correct IMEI.

Author: Laurence Zwimpfer

I am committed to supporting the development of New Zealand as a digitally included nation, where everyone has equitable opportunities to benefit from the digital world. View all posts by Laurence Zwimpfer