Skinny Jump – Page 11 – Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa

Accolades for Skinny

Skinny has been proclaimed number one amongst the major telcos when it comes to customer service. The results of a independent survey of telcos’ service performance was released this morning by the Commerce Commission.

This is doubly good news for Skinny Jump customers – not only are they getting the most affordable internet service in New Zealand, they are now also getting the best internet service.

The Residential Broadband Rankings for the period from January to June 2023 put Skinny ahead of all other major internet providers when it comes to how likely customers are to recommend their provider to friends and family. Skinny also topped the tables in customer satisfaction with how quickly providers resolve customer service issues.

So well done to the Skinny team; we are fortunate to have you as the Jump internet provider.

Let’s celebrate Maori Language Week at 12 noon on Thursday 14 September

Te Rangaihi Reo Māori: The Movement is inviting all of Aotearoa to stop what they are doing and celebrate te reo Māori at 12pm on Thursday 14 September. This marks the very moment the Māori Language Petition was presented to Parliament in 1972. 3 years later, it became what we now know as Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week).

One of our Stepping UP partners, TaiTech in Gisborne, has taken the bull by the horns and plans to deliver their Better Digital Futures class that day in te reo Māori. They are getting some help from some local Kura Kaupapa Māori students, especially when it comes to getting the right pronunciation. They will be walking their kaumatua students through a special lesson on navigating their smartphones in te reo Māori.

So what can your team do on 14 September to celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. Maybe you could display your te reo Māori Jump posters next week and encourage all your staff to test their te reo fluency in reading the poster. An interesting fact that you might not know is that families identifying as Māori are by far the largest group of Skinny Jump users – of the 13,500 new Jump users between July 2022 and June 2023, nearly 7,500 (55%) identified as Māori.

Our DIAA team is coming together on Zoom at 12 noon on 14 September to share what we know about te reo Māori terms for all things digital, as well as learn same standard greeting phrases. We are also planning to test ourselves on how well we can pronounce the Māori names for some of our partners!

On track for the Ciena target!

Just over a month ago, Tawera from the Skinny Jump team, issued a Ciena challenge. Total sign ups were sitting around 400 and Tawera suggested if we could boost the sign up rate to 100 per month, we would achieve the target number of signups (700) by the end of October.

Today, we reached the 500 mark and it’s not even the end of August yet. And special congratulations to the leaderboard front runners below. What a simply magnificent effort from Lorna Blackler and her team at Linwood – a well-deserved box of chocolate fish heading your way!

Total Ciena Partners = 51	502
	Total Issues
Linwood Library	74	15%
Shirley Library	46	9%
Ranui Library	45	9%
Hastings War Memorial Library	40	8%
Hornby Library	32	6%
Wairoa Library	28	6%
Manukau Library	20	4%
Otara Library	20	4%
New Brighton Library	18	4%
Te Takere Levin	17	3%
Kaikohe Library	14	3%
Manurewa Library	14	3%
Onehunga Library	11	2%
Porirua Library	11	2%
Glenfield Library	9	2%
Mangakino Central Charitable Trust	8	2%
Rotorua Library	8	2%

Update on Jump Verification Email delays

Thank you to those partners who have provided feedback on this issue. While this is still not fully resolved, it appears to be an issue in the cloud between a Microsoft ‘send’ server and a Google ‘receive’ server. One partner has tested this by hot spotting through their phone and this didn’t seem to make any difference, so my previous suggestion about using your Jump demo modem is not likely to be a solution.

One thing we did learn today is that the timeout for the Verification Code is around 5 minutes. So if the email with the verification code doesn’t arrive within 5 minutes, then there is no point in waiting, as the code will have expired. The best strategy is to try again (after 5 minutes). Certainly get your customer to check their spam box while you are waiting; one partner mentioned all three sign ups today went to spam.

The partly good news is that this problem is intermittent and partners have successfully signed up 917 new customers this month, including 53 today (so far).

Verification email delays continuing to plague Jump signups

It is now over three weeks since this problem was first reported and despite the best efforts of the Skinny Jump team, there is no immediate resolution in sight. Indications so far is that it is affecting customers with gmail.com addresses, but this could simply be because this is what most Jump customers use. Another suggestion is that some corporate networks (such as local authorities) could have tightened the scrutiny on incoming email to Gmail addresses. This would affect Jump customers signing up using library computers or wifi, for example. Any mail considered to be somewhat suspicious is usually directed into spam folders or in the case of corporate enterprises to a centralised filter that delays the mail until it is manually released or processed and deemed to be safe.

We don’t know for sure if this is the case, but we do know that most of the problems are being reported by our larger library partners.

Our team was in Nelson last week and together with Nelson Library staff signed up 15 new Jump connections at Franklyn Village, a social housing complex. And the good news was that the verification emails all arrived as expected, i.e. within seconds. One difference was that we were using a Jump connection for the sign ups – so that got us thinking!

Partners experiencing these verification email delays when signing up customers might like to try using a Jump connection. Many Jump partners are already using a Jump modem for demo purposes, so it would be just a matter of ensuring it is active when signing up new customers.

We would really like to know how this works out, so please email us (jump@diaa.nz) if it doesn’t make any difference, then we will know it has nothing to do with your local network and will need to reach further into the email cloud. To help the Skinny team with their investigations, they have asked if you could capture email header information and send River (river.burich@spark.co.nz) and me (jump@diaa.nz) a copy if you a notice a delay of more than a few minutes. You can find instructions for doing this here.

Thanks for your help. We do need to get to the bottom of this.

Ciena Signups – Which Name?

Some Ciena Jump partners have asked about which name to use in the Jump Profile form – the student’s name or the parent/caregiver?

The general principle is that Jump account holders (whether modems are provisioned for special plans like Ciena or not) should be the people who have responsibility for the account. In the case of standard Jump, this is the person who is responsible for topping up the account. This is normally an adult.

For special plans like Ciena, the person identified on the Jump Profile form should be the parent or caregiver. So while, there is no need to top up the account, any communications about the programme should go to a responsible adult.

The first communication is an email notification when the account has been provisioned for Ciena (generally a couple of days after signing up) and further emails will be sent towards the end of the year explaining options when the current programme ends.

Possible problem receiving verification emails when using the App to sign up to Jump

A number of partners have been in touch about a problem they are experiencing in receiving the verification email when signing up new Jump customers. One has reported a delay of around 20 minutes.

The Skinny Jump team has been able to replicate this problem for sign ups using the App – with a 15 minute delay. However a desktop signup appears to get the confirmation email within 60 seconds.

We are interested in hearing from anyone who is experiencing this problem to help us understand if it just App signups or whether anyone is experiencing this with desktop signups as well.

Be assured the Jump development team is on the case and hopefully this will be resolved quickly.

It would help in diagnosing this problem if partners could provide the following details if this problem is encountered and email the information to: jump@diaa.nz

Customer name:

Broadband number:

Email address used for Jump sign-up:

Approximate Time/date of email registration:

Approximate Time/date of Verification Code email being received:

Managing your Jump Waiting Lists

Thank you to Jump partners who are using the Waiting List process as described in my blog post from August 2022. For the most part this seems to be working very well, although we are aware that some partners have their own processes for doing this.

The benefit of using my suggested process is that we can take into account people on your Waitlist when sending you new supplies. Our objective is to try and keep you stocked with Jump modems so that you never run out. But we can’t do this if we don’t know how big your waitlist is.

We currently have modem orders in the pipeline for over 150 partners and this means that there can be a delay of up to 2 months before new supplies arrive. We are continuing to give priority to Ciena partners and partners with waiting lists recorded in their GDoc registers.

There are currently around 500 people on the Jump waitlists – and these are just the ones we know about. As modems are issued and we receive completed Profile Forms, we add the customer to your GDoc and remove them from your waitlist. This works most of the time, but we would appreciate your assistance in keeping your waitlists ‘real’.

For example, some people have been on a waitlist for over 6 months and we suspect that they might have found other options. If you know of anyone in this situation, please delete their names from your Wait List.

The Auckland Library team has come up with a good process for managing their waitlists: when they receive a new supply of modems, they notify customers on the waitlist that they have 2 weeks to arrange a time to collect a modem. Anyone who does not respond within 2 weeks is removed from the waitlist and the modem becomes available to issue to other customers.

One final point about the waitlists – please make sure you include the date in column E when customers are added to the waitlist, using the following date format: 9-jun-2023. Google Docs can get confused with dates in the following format 9/6/2023 – is this 9 June (NZ format) or 6 September (US format)?

Ciena Plan – programme being extended to more regions

The Skinny Jump team has agreed to expand the reach of the Ciena programme to more Jump partners. This offers Jump households with school-aged children a fully funded Jump connection for the remainder of the 2023 school year (to the end of December 2023). Nearly 200 new families in 30 different areas have taken up this offer since the pilot extension was offered in February 2023.

You can find out more information about this programme on the Skinny Jump website and by watching our partner briefing session for those participating in the pilot (just a tip if you are viewing the recording of this webinar, for best quality viewing, we suggest you use the High Definition (1080p) setting:

We are now calling for Expressions of Interest (EOI) from other Jump partners who may be interested in offering the Ciena programme to students in your local schools. We were not able to include every partner who submitted an EOI in the pilot programme; in some cases this was because of limited capacity on Spark’s 4G cell towers. If you are still interested, please complete this new EOI and we’ll check the coverage situation again.

Please submit your EOIs no later than Friday 16 June 2023

Jump customers being offered library cards

I learnt about a great initiative by Te Takere’s digital inclusion librarian, Leala Faleseuga, earlier this week. She explained that whenever she signs up a customer for Jump she asks them if they have a library card, and if not she is quick to sign them up. And then she can introduce them to the free eLibrary resources offered by Horowhenua Libraries, including Libby, Hoopla and Cloud Library.

I know that most, if not all library partners, are providing eLibrary services for their communities, but what impressed me about Leala’s approach is how she and her team at Te Takere are making the connection between digital connectivity and content.

I have mentioned this to a few other library partners during the week and they were quick to respond with “what a good idea!”

Our (DIAA) vision for Jump was that this would provide a pathway for communities to increase their digital skills and engagement with the digital world.

Having access to a digital device and an affordable internet device is just the beginning. Thank you to all our partners who are continuing to help their communities enjoy the benefits of the digital world.

I met with a senior government official during the week and she was so excited about being introduced to Libby by a librarian at Newtown Library in Wellington. She has now reached book number 200, thanks to Libby!