The extension of the Jump eligibility criteria to other digitally disadvantaged groups such as seniors and people with disabilities, as well as the Covid-19 constraints that we have all had to face during the last seven weeks, has made us think about more flexible options for delivering Jump. Two particular situations have come to light.
- 35 year old Jake takes responsibility for setting up a Jump account for his elderly Mum who lives in another town and has health issues. Jake completes an online application for his Mum but uses his own email address, so that he can check all the details such as the courier address were entered correctly. The home delivery service kicked in and arranged for the modem to be couriered to his Mum. When the modem arrived, Jake proceeded to set up the Skinny account in his Mum’s name but with his own email address so that he could verify the account when the Skinny email arrived. The only thing Jake overlooked was that he would need the modem broadband number and the verification code to set up the account, and as the modem was now some hundreds of kilometres away, he could not easily check this. So he called his mum and asked her for the codes on the base of the modem, but his mum was a bit confused by all the numbers and wasn’t what ones to give him. Lightbulb moment! “Mum, take a photo of the base and rear of the modem and send them to me!” Jake was now able to complete setting up the account. Roll-on 30 days and Jake gets an email from Skinny reminding him that he needs to top up his Mum’s account and renew the $5 plan. Jake’s Mum lives alone and she uses less than 30GB during the first month, so $5 a month is not really a financial burden for Jake. Remembering to top up every month is a bit of a pain for Jake, so he loads $20 onto his Mum’s account; each month $5 will be deducted, as the plan automatically renews. Now how easy is that for Jake and his Mum.
- Leona works for an organisation that provides support to people with disabilities and wants to provide (and pay for) a Jump connection for 10 people in her community. She has already procured 10 Chromebooks to set up a library of devices that people can borrow while under Covid-19 restrictions. The people she wants to support are living at different locations so she opted for the home-delivery service. However, she asked DIAA to provide her with a schedule of the modems allocated with the IMEI and Broadband numbers, as well as the Verification codes. This enabled her to set up individual accounts for each recipient. She also elected to set up a new email and password for each recipient, so that she could initially manage the accounts by paying for the top ups and renewing the Jump plans for each of the 10 people being supported, as required. Her plan is to eventually hand over the accounts to the individuals involved for them to self-manage. To simplify the process of accessing and topping up accounts she selected the Skinny Linked Accounts option. While this was originally intended for parents to manage their children’s Skinny accounts, it can equally be used for managed community situations like the one described above. Another organisation similar to Leona’s is happy to arrange for the delivery of the modems to their constituents, but the process is effectively the same. We are referring to organisations like these as Community Connectors.
Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa 