Spark, convert copper phone to fibre, have ETP box.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark, convert copper phone to fibre, have ETP box.

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#1336498 3-Jul-2015 14:59

MrJohn: 14:13 Good grief! I have received an email from customer services to say the wiring has been done and there must be a fault so they are handing it over to 'faults'.

This is what I observe:

1: phone plugged into ONT operates normally.

2: phone plugged into faceplate terminal beside ONT, silence.

3: phone plugged into house jack point, 'beep beep beep'!

Obviously the house jack points are still connected to 'something' and it is not the ONT!

The house jack is normally not connected to the ONT unless you had someone do it..

Regards,

Old3eyes

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#1336525 3-Jul-2015 16:00

MrJohn: 14:13 Good grief! I have received an email from customer services to say the wiring has been done and there must be a fault so they are handing it over to 'faults' ...

"Faults" are cheaper than "Install" - be happy

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antant

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#1336704 3-Jul-2015 22:55

Have you tried both ports on the faceplate terminal?

In spite of everyone saying to plug it into the port numbered "1" (on the left), we had to plug ours into the one on the right ("2").

(ok, on rereading it, your issue may be bigger than that, but, may help others at least)

InstallerUFB

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#1336735 4-Jul-2015 06:14

Sideface:
MrJohn: 14:13 Good grief! I have received an email from customer services to say the wiring has been done and there must be a fault so they are handing it over to 'faults' ...

"Faults" are cheaper than "Install" - be happy

Actualy they arent because they will/should look up the records and find he hasnt been cut over and then will charge the Chorus Service visit fee and the hourly rate to do the work and not the set fee to do the cut over ( I should qualify that with- the RSP will be charged if they ask for it to be connected by faults and it was never originaly asked for on a service order request)

MrJohn

77 posts

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#1336743 4-Jul-2015 07:43

antant: Have you tried both ports on the faceplate terminal?

In spite of everyone saying to plug it into the port numbered "1" (on the left), we had to plug ours into the one on the right ("2").

(ok, on rereading it, your issue may be bigger than that, but, may help others at least)

There is only one socket in the faceplate terminal box, two holes but only one socket and nothing connected except the blue and white pair.

MrJohn

77 posts

Master Geek

#1336744 4-Jul-2015 08:03

Actualy they arent because they will/should look up the records and find he hasnt been cut over and then will charge the Chorus Service visit fee and the hourly rate to do the work and not the set fee to do the cut over ( I should qualify that with- the RSP will be charged if they ask for it to be connected by faults and it was never originaly asked for on a service order request)

However, the pamplet which came in the mail said that if we have the faceplate box we might be able to do the switch easily ourselves, of course the word is 'might' so I will wait and see what happens.

Otherwise my options include:

....Ditch the house wiring (which no doubt cost a pretty penny when the house was built 5 years ago and buy three cordless phones with one base station which would cost about the same as the connection fee I have been quoted.

.....Get up in the roof space and disconnect our hour wiring from their terminal box and cable it through to the POTS terminal on the ONT.

.....Continue to make do with a phone in the storage closet where the ONT is located.

Frankly, I suspect 99.999% of the problems with this apparently simple job has been the difficulty of communicating with Spark. Problems started from the very beginning...for example the letter they set us inviting (with menaces**) for us to ditch the copper landline. The letter shows our address, account number and line number and gave the spark.co.nz/fibreswitch web page as the place to go to get things rolling.

Unfortunately I spent about 3 days trying whatever I could and on the 123 Customer Services line getting past the first page of the website. The problem was the account number they showed on the letter is not actually our account number, it is something else called the 'customer number'. I might have thought to double check that against an invoice but I was somewhat diverted by the error message which insisted the address was wrong. That is very poor software development skills on their part.

Then there is their own communications systems, while trying to get through that web page someone got past the account number issue then I was put on hold and eventually reverted to a dial tone. I lost count of how many times something like that happened while waiting to be transferred to someone or even mid sentence.

I filled in the online complaints form and got a nice email reply 13 days later.

***the last paragraph of the letter informs me that if we do not make the change we will be charged more for copper from November this year. I hope we can get this matter resolved within the remaining four months, we have already used up one month!

ajobbins

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#1336929 4-Jul-2015 14:49

InstallerUFB:
Sideface:
MrJohn: 14:13 Good grief! I have received an email from customer services to say the wiring has been done and there must be a fault so they are handing it over to 'faults' ...

"Faults" are cheaper than "Install" - be happy

Actualy they arent because they will/should look up the records and find he hasnt been cut over and then will charge the Chorus Service visit fee and the hourly rate to do the work and not the set fee to do the cut over ( I should qualify that with- the RSP will be charged if they ask for it to be connected by faults and it was never originaly asked for on a service order request)

Why are people being charged for an install at all when this is a chorus initiative?

Won't it just cause most people to resist a move to a fibre landline? Especially the recent ones where the tech has installed the little box, but only done half the job.

Twitter: ajobbins

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MrJohn

77 posts

Master Geek

#1336933 4-Jul-2015 15:10

Won't it just cause most people to resist a move to a fibre landline?

According to the pamphlet from Spark they will be charging us more for copper come November if we are still on copper phone.

ajobbins

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#1336938 4-Jul-2015 15:33

MrJohn:
Won't it just cause most people to resist a move to a fibre landline?

According to the pamphlet from Spark they will be charging us more for copper come November if we are still on copper phone.

So, extortion then?

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richms

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#1336955 4-Jul-2015 17:02

ajobbins:
MrJohn:
Won't it just cause most people to resist a move to a fibre landline?

According to the pamphlet from Spark they will be charging us more for copper come November if we are still on copper phone.

So, extortion then?

No, charging what the service costs them.

Having 2 live connections into a building will always cost more than one.

Richard rich.ms

NorthernZone

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#1336986 4-Jul-2015 17:37

I'm a newbie, non-geek, but have followed (& learned from) Geekzone for some time. Especially grateful to JohnR for recommendations & advice (what about the new Vodafone Ultra - even better than the Smart Prime, albeit at twice the price?!)

Anyway I to am having terrible frustrations with Spark in migrating from copper to VoF. We built a new house last year, with Cat6 cabling throughout - fibre works fine for internet - but we kept copper landline. Last week Spark called us and advised we should migrate to VoF. No, we don't have Sky; nor medical probs; understood the suggestion of UPS backup etc, so Spark then said we'd be switched over last Friday. We then received a confirmation email from Downer and on Friday morning our copper connection was duly turned off - remotely. We had been told we'd then need to re-route our phone cable directly into POT1 of our ONT. Okay, I thought, I can do that! But then I discovered our phone jack was an RJ45 (ethernet) connector, while the POT1 socket was an old RJ11 connector (I think I have that the right way around).

Since this had been a Spark initiative I rang them and explained but that was bloody hopeless! I spent two hours (yes! two hours!) talking to 12 different people - with lots of time wasted between transfers - and I think only two people had any idea at all what I was talking about!! Finally they agreed to send a technician around (recall this was their initiative, not mine) and said that someone would ring me back later that day. Of course they didn't - it is Spark, after all - and 30 hours later I'm still waiting.

I've now checked my drawer of electronic bits and pieces and did find a short RJ11 to RJ45 cable (heaven knows where that came from), but it has male jacks at either end while I need an RJ45 (female) socket to a RJ11 (male) jack...

Grr!

ajobbins

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#1337004 4-Jul-2015 18:26

Just use an RJ11 <> RJ11 cable. It will fit in the RJ45 socket just fine. May bend the outer pins in the socket, but that won't matter as they will never be used.

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ajobbins

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#1337006 4-Jul-2015 18:27

richms: No, charging what the service costs them.

Having 2 live connections into a building will always cost more than one.

Sure, but that's not the customers fault and shouldn't be their problem.

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BarTender

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#1337007 4-Jul-2015 18:29

Also in the Huawei HG630 and HG659 box when you were shipped that router for your broadband service there is a RJ11 to RJ45 cable used for VDSL that's the "Black" cable. But works equally as well for Voice over Fibre wiring.

InstallerUFB

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Ultimate Geek

#1337052 4-Jul-2015 19:17

ajobbins:
Won't it just cause most people to resist a move to a fibre landline? Especially the recent ones where the tech has installed the little box, but only done half the job.

Its actualy more the point that Chorus have done half the job already for free and you (or the RSP) pay to have it just connected on to your house wireing.

On the originaly installs (3yrs ago) you didnt get any additional copper cableing, just the fibre 90% of the time - because that was the standard install at the time - those people or their RSP have to pay to have all the interconnecting cabling done )
and then later on you got the copper but no jack because that was the standard install at the time - so they have to pay to have that installed and in many cases a link cable run between the fibre demark and the copper one.

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