Ministry of Education announces plans to connect all school students

The big news of the week came on Wednesday 8 April, with the Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins, announcing an $87.7 million plan to roll out learning from home.  This will involve a combination of online, television and physical learning resources.  The part that mostly affects Jump partners is the provision of internet services for households that currently do not have an internet connection.  The Ministry is collaborating with all telecommunications and internet service providers to make this happen as quickly as possible, with priority being given to households with senior secondary students working towards NCEA.

Spark is contributing to this by accelerating the deployment of Jump modems, the first of which were distributed on 9 April.  These are being supplied direct from the warehouse of Spark’s hardware partner, Ingram Micro.  DIAA will be assisting at the national level with faulty modem returns, but we are not expecting to involve delivery partners in handing the returns or in supplying replacements.

The process for reporting faulty modems will be the same – all Jump users must contact the Skinny Helpdesk if they suspect a faulty modem; the Skinny team will attempt to resolve the problem remotely, but if they are unable to do this, they will log the modem details in an online fault register that is shared with DIAA.  We will supply a replacement modem and either:

(1) a courier bag for the return of the modem to us (mainly for units supplied as part of the school programme); or

(2) instructions to hold the faulty modem until after the lockdown, when it should be returned to their nearest Jump partner (see below).


Note with faulty modem replacements

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.

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