Category: Skinny Jump

Now Here’s a How-de-do!

Just imagine, you are sitting in your cosy office on a cold Matariki weekend holiday, packaging modems for all those lonely souls without a Jump internet connection and you are confronted with this:

Two Broadband stickers on a Jump modem!! What a dilemma! What a How-de-do! (If this is a new term for you, let me politely suggest it is time to brush up on Ko-Ko’s dilemma in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.

Now some of you might be familiar with Kahoot- the best place to go to get answers. What to do? Choose from the options below:

  1. Stop issuing modems immediately;
  2. Decide that this is a faulty modem and race to complete a Modem Returns Form;
  3. Call the Skinny Care Team for help;
  4. Remove both labels so that your customer doesn’t get confused;
  5. Of if all else fails, have a hissy fit.

OR maybe you might stop and think about this for just a minute. Maybe one of the broadband labels is correct and the other one has inadvertently attached itself. But here’s the next ‘How-de-do’. Which is the right one?

Aha! let me take a look to see if the Broadband number is on the SIM card. Carefully remove the SIM card and inspect (only suitable for those with excellent eye sight). No BB number, but there is another number, not one that we normally use – the SIM ID number. Can we get a match with the bar coded number on the BB sticker. Bingo!

Oops, another modem with two stickers (and not immediately visible as in my photo above – they have been attached on opposite sides of the modem). Bit of a pain having to remove the SIM card every time. Take another look at the photo and it is clear the two stickers are different sizes. If you have been particularly observant in recent months you will have noticed that the BB stickers are now smaller than they used to be.

And another Aha! moment. Consider that we have been using refurbished modems for the last six months and just maybe some of the CEVA team are having a bad day and forgot to remove the old sticker.

Here comes modem number 3 and yes, Bingo again, the SIM card matches the number on the smaller BB sticker. So now I am up to the fifth modem with two stickers and without even checking, I am simply removing the larger sticker and because I have trouble throwing things away, they are lining up neatly on the side of my monitor (just in case I have got this horribly wrong).

And if you are fed up with broadband numbers, have a sing along with Ko-Ko, Yum-Yum and Nanki-Poo. The Mikado was first performed at the Savoy Theatre in London on 14 March 1885, and who hasn’t been part of a school performance!

KO-KO:
Here’s a how-de-do!
If I marry you,
When your time has come to perish,
Then the maiden whom you cherish
Must be slaughtered too!
Here’s a how-de-do!

YUM-YUM:
Here’s a pretty mess!
In a month, or less,
I must die without a wedding!
Let the bitter tears I’m shedding
Witness my distress;
Here’s a pretty mess!

NANKI-POO:
Here’s a state of things
To her life she clings!
Matrimonial devotion
Doesn’t seem to suit her notion —
Burial it brings!
Here’s a state of things!

ENSEMBLE (together):
With a passion that’s intense
I worship and adore,
But the laws of common sense
We oughtn’t to ignore.
If what he says is true,
’Tis death to marry you!
Here’s a pretty state of things!
Here’s a pretty how-de-do!

ChatGPT’s response to my ‘cunning plan’

A Cunning Plan (Jump Modem Edition)

“Wait, my lord, do not despair,
For I have a cunning plan to share!”
So whispered Baldrick, full of pride,
With hope that fortune’s on our side.

The modems stalled, the shelves ran bare,
Partners waiting everywhere.
But last week marked a turning tide,
As 396 were set to glide.

No longer thirty in one big stack —
Just twelve or six in every pack.
High-turnover partners get smaller loads,
But restocked faster down the road.

The goal? To spread supply more wide,
To every partner far and wide.
No more giant boxy heaps,
No modem droughts, no stockpile weeps.

Let’s hope this plan will smoothly run,
Unlike Baldrick’s — which came undone.
But if it flops, as Baldrick’s tend,
I know you’ll tell me in the end!

“Wait my lord, do not despair. For I have a cunning plan.”

Fans of Blackadder will be all too familiar with this phrase that frequently popped out of the mouth of Baldrick. Most of Baldrick’s “cunning plans” ended up in disaster, but I am hoping for better things with my latest cunning plan to get Jump modems flowing again.

Last week was a milestone (I hope) in freeing-up the Jump modem supply chain. Orders were placed on CEVA for 396 modems and 204 of these had been shipped by Friday. But while these volumes still fall well short of our targets, we are trying a new approach (“cunning plan”) to keep more partners supplied.

29 partners have either already received a shipment from last week’s batch or will do early next week. This contrasts with an average of only 9 partners receiving shipments each week for the rest of May.

So what is our cunning new plan? Put simply, this involves limiting individual partner shipment quantities to no more than 12 (previously 30). So all last week’s shipments were for 6 or 12 modems, 6 for partners with low turnover and 12 for those with high turnover.

At month end (yesterday), partners were holding 1613 modems in stock; a few are well stocked having recently received a new supply of 30, while over 200 partners have 2 or fewer modems. So the new ‘cunning’ plan is to get modems flowing to more partners.

Those with very high turnovers will not miss out; it just means supplies will arrive more frequently in smaller quantities. Some partners might even think this is a better idea, avoiding the need to find storage space when five boxes of modems arrive at the same time!

So let’s hope this ‘cunning plan’ does not end up like Baldrick’s ones. If it does, I have no fear that you will let me know!

Jump Profile Form Updates

Some partners have asked for clarification about why the Jump Profile form is now asking for contact details of the person completing the Profile Form. This was implemented a few weeks ago because of recurring errors by people completing the form; we want to identify these people so that we can contact them and offer further support.

But some partners questioned the need for this, especially as a copy of the form was automatically being emailed to the customer. So this caused us to re-think why customers needed an email copy.

The form was created many years ago on the assumption that customers would be filling this in themselves, with guidance from a partner as part of the modem setup process. But after consulting with some partners it is clear that this is not the way things are happening; most partners have their own staff completing this form. So if we take this as the ‘norm’, we can make some changes.

As of this morning, we have stopped emailing a copy of the form to the customer.

This was originally intended for customers to check that the information they had provided was correct and on a few occasions, customers did do this. But this is very rare and there doesn’t appear to be any other benefit in sharing the form with them. So we have stopped sending a copy to the customer. You will notice that you no longer need to enter the email address of the customer at the start of the form; this was the entry that triggered the auto-send. We still need their email, but this now comes later in the form along with other contact details.

We have noted the concern of some partners about including staff details in the Profile Form. By not sharing these with customers, we hope this addresses the main concern. We are happy for staff to just use their first name (we understand with most library partners, staff display their first name on a name badge) and a generic email if they prefer.

The Profile Form is confidential to the DIAA Jump team. This is not shared with the Skinny Care Team nor with partners; we use this to update individual partner GSheets, so that we can track modem issues and arrange a resupply of modems when required. Most of the data collected, especially around demographics and target user groups is aggregated and used for high level programme reporting.

Jump Address Checker update

We have arrived at the start of a new month and it’s just as well everyone is taking a long King’s Birthday holiday break as the Jump Address Checker is still down. I know the Skinny team is trying to fix this, so hang in there.

Just one update for my earlier message about using the Skinny address checker. You can continue to use this but beware of the ‘fibre trap’ and the plan availability. Skinny offers both wireless and fibre solutions, so when you use this checker, it reports on the availability of plans for all services potentially available at this address (including fibre). So make sure you are checking the wireless options and scroll down to check that the plan is available.

Note in the example below from the Skinny Address Checker that:

(1) a Wireless Connection is available; and

(2) the wireless plan is available “CHOOSE THIS PLAN”. If it says “NOT AVAILABLE” as for the $55 plan, then this means there is no capacity at this address and you can not proceed with a Jump connection.

Hopefully, by the time you back from your King’s Birthday holiday, this will be old news and the Jump checker will be back in operation.

Skinny Jump address checker offline today

Vanessa Tedesco from the Fingertip Library in Christchurch alerted me at 8.46am this morning that the Jump address checker was not working. Since then, I have received numerous alerts from other partners.

Usually with issues like this, the software team at Spark is onto it like a shot, and before I can get around to a blog post, the problem has been sorted. But here we are over 8 hours later and when I checked a few minutes ago, the address checker was still not working.

I have been advising everyone who contacted me to use the Skinny Wireless Broadband address checker as a backup.

Skinny Jump uses the same wireless network as Skinny Wireless Broadband customers, so this should be pretty reliable.

I’ll provide an update when Skinny advises me that the Jump address checker has been fixed.

Oh dear – another ‘annus horribilis’?

2025 is rapidly becoming for Jump modems what the late Queen Elizabeth II referred to in 1992 as an ‘annus horribilis‘. In a speech marking the 40th anniversary of her accession to the throne she said: “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘annus horribilis.'”

Now, the Queen was not referring to Jump modems in 1992 – the internet had only recently been invented. She was in fact referring to troubles within her own family.

But we also have troubles within our Jump family. We have reached an all-time low with the supply of Jump modems; it was bad enough during the Covid years when suppliers in China closed their factories and international freight was disrupted.

We currently have 179 Jump delivery partners waiting for just under 3000 modems. 40% of these partners have no stock or almost no stock. So far this year, the supplier (CEVA) is 2000 modems short of their agreed shipment levels (1400 per month).

One of the reasons for the lag is that CEVA is refurbishing modems and while that in itself is a good thing (and good for the planet), it is taking a lot longer than simply provisioning new modems.

We are doing the best we can to prioritise deliveries to partners with no stock or only 1 or 2 modems, so it is more important than ever for partners to make sure their Google Sheet record matches reality.

Check the top of your GSheet for these cells. ‘Actual Stock on hand’ is the number of modems we think you have available for issue, including delinked modems, and this controls your delivery priority; so if this number doesn’t match the number that you actually have, please email jump@diaa.nz the IMEI numbers of the modems you are holding so that we can get your GSheet back in order.

The Queen got through her ‘annus horribilis‘ and lived for another 30 years, so we are hoping to do the same.

Ciena – and the winner is….

Ashburton Library, with their stunning Ciena display! I understand some goodies will be winging your way soon.

A reminder to all our Jump partners – you too can be a winner and sign up families with school-aged children in your community for the Ciena plan – free internet for the rest of the year.

All Jump partners can be Ciena partners; you just need to register with Sue (sue@diaa.nz) or Shelley (shelley@diaa.nz) and they will explain the process.

216 new families have already joined the Ciena family this year, but we still have room for another 384! 45 partners have already signed a family up so far this year – the leaders are in the table below. Over 25% of all the signups are in just one city – it probably isn’t too hard for you to work out which one this is! And I am sure they won’t mind me sharing their secret weapon – everyone signing up for Skinny Jump is asked if they have school-aged children and if so, would they like the Ciena plan (210GB free data every month).

Jump PartnerTotal Ciena Plan
Shirley Library26
Ranui Library17
Hastings War Memorial Library16
Linwood Library15
Flaxmere Library9
Matatiki Hornby Centre9
New Brighton Library9
Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-po Levin8
Glen Eden Library7
Glenfield Library7
Ashburton Library6
Mt Roskill Library6
Glenview Community Centre5
Marlborough Library5
Pukete Neighbourhood House5
Dargaville Library4
Glen Innes Library4
Highland Park Library4
Onehunga Library4
Otara Library4
Pakuranga Library4
Smart Newtown4
Avondale Library3
Kaiapoi Library3
Northcote Library3
Te Atatu Peninsula Library3
Havelock North Library2
New Lynn Library2
Papatoetoe War Memorial Library2
TaiTech2
Taupo Budget Advisory Service2
Waitakere Library2
Wellsford War Memorial Library2