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.
Now the challenge is to spot what the following two pictures have to do with Jump!
Here’s a hint. She works in a library. She is famous for many things, not least of all is her creativity. She has exhibited at Te Papa! She features regularly in local and international media. She has the enviable position of Digital Inclusion Coordinator | Kaikōtuitui, Mātau Matihiko in her North Island Library. Now, wouldn’t just every library love to have one of those!
She says: I just wanted to share that I love Skinny JUMP modem time because I love reusing the boxes and the packaging! Our last delivery was in September and I used the boxes and the packing paper to help fill a brand-new garden bed that I was creating on my driveway. I am now eagerly considering a new garden box to stuff my latest round of Skinny JUMP boxes and packing paper into!
She is the one and only Leala Faleseuga!!
Watch out sustainable awards – here she comes – reduce, reuse , recycle!!
Each year we ask all our Jump partners to do a stocktake of their Jump modems to help us start the new year with a clean slate. If your Jump stock matches the number in cell E2 of your Jump GSheet, please send us a short email confirming this (jump@diaa.nz). If you don’t know how to access your GSheet, send us an email and we’ll remind you.
Check the top few lines of your GSheet – it should look something like this:
If there is a mismatch with your ‘actual stock on hand’, please email us the IMEI numbers (the numbers beginning with 8668, 8670, 8629, 8605 or 8664) for the ones you are holding and we’ll get your Gsheet back in order.
You will recall that we use the stock data in the GSheet to generate and prioritise new orders, so it is really important to keep these aligned.
Please also check that we have the correct contact name in cell A2 – this is the person we send new modem supplies to. If this is not correct please email us with the new contact person – name, email and contact phone number.
We would like you to confirm these details before Christmas; to help you with this, you might get a call from Georgia or Tori, our two Jump helpers (like Santa’s Christmas Elves).
And one other thing – we know some partners just never seem to be able to find the time to complete Modem Returns forms when a faulty modem is returned. So when you are doing your stocktake, please take a note of any old modems cluttering your cupboards and unsuitable for re-issue, we’ll send you a courier label to recover them. Just tell us the size of the box you will be using so we can get the courier charges right. Or if it is just one or two pesky modems, we can send you a return courier bag.
I had two calls from partners yesterday about their modem shipments – they had received two shipments of modems and were wondering if there had been a mistake. That was a nice surprise – the calls I normally get are asking about when more modems are coming.
So if you are one of the lucky partners who received two shipments, accept this as an early Christmas present. As it happens there was a system problem that resulted in duplicate orders being sent.
The really good news is that CEVA has caught up with the huge backlog of modem shipments that have persisted for all of this year. There are a few more shipments to go out this week, but then everyone should be well stocked for Christmas and the New Year.
As always if you find that you have no stock, or you are down to your last 2 modems please send an email to jump@diaa.nz.
Due to bad weather in and around the Philippines, the Skinny Care Team unfortunately have limited agents available to support the Skinny and Jump queues. As a result, the voice queues have been restricted and will only be open between 10am – 2pm today.
Alternative support channels
Messaging channels (Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp) are still open as usual: 8:00am to 07:00pm – please see our Skinny Help page for further info, here.
The Jump IVR (Dial 0800 4 SKINNY > Press ‘3’ > Enter BB Number and Modem Verification code) is also still available to use for balance checks, top-up and Jump plan purchases.
Modem Troubleshooting/Replacement Modem Support
Dial 0800 4 Skinny > Press ‘4’ for ‘Issues with your modem’ to speak to an agent.
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If the terrible weather persists, the above changes to Call Centre channel availability and hours may be extended through to the end of the week.
Unlike the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland you are not too late to sign families up for Ciena Jump.
A number of partners are starting to ask whether it is too late to sign up families with school-aged children for Ciena Jump, but it is never too late! OK, I understand that families signing up in November will only get two months of support under the Ciena plan, but that’s still a saving of $60!
But the best news is that if Ciena extends their sponsorship to 2026, existing Ciena families will automatically receive a fully subsidised Jump connection for 2026 – that’s a saving of $360!
If the Ciena programme is not extended in 2026, anyone on the Ciena Plan will revert to standard Skinny Jump, which is still the most affordable internet connection available in New Zealand.
We are on track to sign up 600 new Ciena families in 2025 – we have 63 places left! 300 families with school-aged children sign up for Jump every month, so that’s 600 over the next two months. So go for it – ask every family signing up for Jump if they have school-aged children and if they do, offer them the free Ciena option. This will save them $60 this year and guarantee them a front-row seat if the programme is extended in 2026.
And one last thing – if you missed Sue’s email inviting you to complete our short Ciena survey – it’s not too late! Here is the link to the survey.
Well, would you believe it! Next year with be the 10th anniversary of the Skinny Jump internet service (originally call Spark Jump). And what is even more surprising is that there are still things to learn about this remarkable service.
Today’s questions came from Phoebe Wang at Ashburton Library at 10:10 am. I can feel a Kahoot coming on, but maybe Jump delivery partners can use this as a rapid fire test for all their staff involved in issuing Jump modems:
Do customers get a reminder when their data is about to run out?
If so, is this a text message, a Jump app notification or an email?
How much data is left when you get the notification?
Can you top up after you have run out of data?
Well, who knows the answers?
To start with I asked myself – surely after nearly 10 years I should know some basic stuff like this. Well I scored a miserable 1/4 and even that missed a very important option – think IVR (see below)!
So I turned to our DIAA expert in all things Jump – Sue Kini; she has been producing Jump training materials for most of the last 10 years, and what’s more, collaborating with the Spark team that developed the Jump Partner Pathway training modules. She has also been the creator of challenging Jump exams (called Kahoots). Surely she would know. Ummm….. maybe not. It is Friday after all.
So next up I thought I’d check with Shelley Struthers, who spends much of her day helping Jump partners around the country with all their day-to-day problems. But, oops… Friday is Shelley’s day off, so I thought better of disturbing her.
OK, so I need to elevate this to the one person I send all my “Jump don’t knows” to – Mel Manueli. Mel has a new job title Digital Equity Partner (Skinny Jump – Digital and Operations). Fortunately, she’s the same Mel who handles all our “don’t knows”. So, at 10:37am I toss the ball to Mel.
And at 14:14, bingo! Mel produces the goods! She explains that there are some default settings that can be viewed through the web dashboard sign-in, but not the Jump App:
This default setting means that Standard Jump customers will automatically receive an email:
When they are at 20MB of data (for their current plan) left
When they are at 0MB of data (for their current plan)
To be able to receive Email notifications for successful Top-Ups – they’ll need to go into these settings: My Account / Dashboard > Account Settings > Notification Settings and tick/untick the options based on their preference.
Things to note
The above controls/settings can only be accessed and updated when a customer logs in via a web browser (can be on their phone or desktop), but not on the Jump App
These settings are the same for Mobile customers – so unfortunately the ‘SMS’ option is not able to be setup for Jump customers
Mel also reminded us of the IVR option if customers have no data available and want to top up.: Call 0800 4 Skinny > Press ‘3’ > Enter BB Number & Modem Verification Code > Top-Up
I’m not sure if Mel just knows this stuff or whether she has a higher order knowledge partner who she sends her “don’t knows” to. But do we care – Phoebe has her answer and to close the loop at 16:22 she replies:
“Thank you so much for your prompt reply, you* are amazing as always. The customer is happy with the answers, it ease his worry. Have a good weekend.”
*Footnote: to be clear Phoebe’s reference to “you” is the ‘royal you’, i.e. everyone involved in delivering and supporting such a fantastic service!
I received an email from a partner yesterday who had just completed a mini stock-take and discovered 3 modems listed on their GSheet that they no longer had. He thought this was probably because Profile Forms had not been completed by some staff members when the modems were issued.
So this led him to ask was: “what is the impact of us not completing the profile form?” He wanted a compelling reason to explain to staff issuing modems why this is important. Fair enough, I thought.
Sure, we ask for a lot of demographic information – this is used in our annual report to programme funders, providing evidence that the modems are reaching the target groups. But that is not the most important thing.
We ask for the address where the modem is going to be used, so that we can avoid issuing more than one modem to the same household. But that is not the most important thing either.
We also use the address information to provide summary reports by town and region to provide evidence that Jump is reaching the most digitally disadvantaged communities. But that is not the most important thing either.
We ask customers to tell us who is helping them set up their Jump modems. We think the support provided by libraries and local community partners is absolutely critical to the ongoing success of Jump, and this helps provide the evidence. But this is not the most important thing either.
We ask customers if they have school-aged children and therefore qualify for free internet connections with programmes like Ciena. But that is not the most important thing either.
We ask for the phone contact details of the customer and their explicit approval for any follow up calls to get feedback on how Jump is helping them. But that is not the most important thing either.
OK, enough, I hear you cry! What then is the most compelling reason for completing a Skinny Jump Profile Modem??
Quite simply, so that we know when to send you more modems!
We (DIAA) manage the modem supply process for Jump, and for probably rather obvious reasons, we do not have access to Skinny’s customer database. So we rely on the Profile Form to update us on the modems being issued. We closely monitor all partners’ stock levels and each week, prioritise deliveries to those with low stock. So if partners issue a modem without completing a Profile Form, we think you still have this modem, and you move down the re-order priorities.
We strongly recommend that all partners periodically do a stock check and confirm that the number of modems they actually have aligns with the number in cell E2 (Actual Stock on hand) of your Jump GSheet.
If there is a mismatch please send a schedule of the IMEI numbers of the modems you are holding to jump@diaa.nz and we will update your GSheet accordingly.
The good news for the partner who raised this issue was that when his Gsheet was corrected, it immediately flagged the need for a new order, which we have actioned.
Tim Edmonds, one of our Digi-Coaches based at Kapiti District Libraries, has given us a timely reminder that GPT doesn’t have all the answers to life, certainly when it comes to data analytics!
We have been trying to present our Jump stats by local and regional authority area, but have been struggling to find a look up table that groups NZ towns and cities into these regions. I thought this would be an excellent job for Chat GPT. Chat GPT helpfully identified StatsNZ as a source of data (something I sort of already knew), and directed me to some stats tables that might have been useful if I had the skills to navigate them, but after numerous frustrating attempts I failed to get the output I needed.
So with nearly 50 Digi-Coaches now working in libraries in Northland, Waikato, Central North Island, Wellington and the Top of the South Island, I threw out this challenge to them and Tim came up with the goods, in less than an hour, he said.
His solution was not to use Chat GPT, nor Claude, nor Gemini, nor Co-Pilot, but a proprietary tool called ArcGIS Pro, something he was familiar with as an Insights Data Analyst in a previous life.
So what are the results? Here’s a taster. Probably not a lot of surprises. We are planning to develop this a bit further – we are missing 10% of all issues in smaller towns and this also doesn’t include the online orders (another 10%). So with Tim’s help, we plan to add these to the pot and also do a sort by TLAs (Councils).
A Jump partner has signalled an issue that they are having with jump sign-ups using the web browser. They are getting the error message “Whoops, something went wrong” after entering the Broadband number and Verification code.
The Skinny Ops team has confirmed that they are experiencing some issues, so our suggestion is to use the App signup instead until this is resolved.
This message is for all ‘avid followers’, not actually ‘fashion’ in this case but Jump Partner GSheets. I know these are not everyone’s cup of tea, but they do play a critical role in our efforts to ensure a smooth flow of modems.
I know that at least one of you is such an avid follower of Jump GSheets that if her one is not updated with any new modem issues by the time she arrives at work each day, she is firing off an email, wondering if there has been a mistake.
Now that was the day (nearly a year ago) when there was an Alistair, who made a point of starting his day at 5am by updating everyone’s Gsheet (transferring the Profile Form data to partner Gsheets). We thought we might have an AI replacement for Alistair by now, but sadly not. Instead we have Tori (Talented, Outstanding, Resourceful and Industrious), who is not an AI engine but a very talented and competent student. Unfortunately, she still at school, and can only work for us on Saturdays.
So this means the Jump Profile data only gets transferred to partner GSheets on Saturdays. But all is well, this is in time to shuffle order priorities for the next week’s orders, which are processed every Thursday.
Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa 