Copper line discontinuation, mum given a 4g phone router?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Copper line discontinuation, mum given a 4g phone router?

sleemanj

1490 posts

Uber Geek

#245103 18-Jan-2019 16:52

Ok, so, Mum: "can you do this I don't know how" as she hands me a Spark branded 4g wifi router.

Of course, I only get half a disjointed story about it, and I'm not up with the play on the current situation. Apparently she is "the last one on the street with a normal phone and Spark has told her she has to use this for her phone now it will be cheaper", this is in suburban Christchurch. It's a 4g router, with a line port for the phone.

As far as she says has not signed up for any broadband plan, but I would not take that as gospel.

There are multiple phone jacks in the house, but *right now* she only uses one of them.

Is this kosher or has she been sold into something she shouldn't have been? I remember vaguely the copper POTS network being discontinued, but I'd have expected that to wind up being spark or whoever running fibre and fitting a VOIP to the POTS demarcation point when the time comes so that all the phone sockets in the house "just work" and that would be part of "line maintenance"?

Is using multiple phones in a house not the done thing any more, I don't use phones myself so I really don't know what is common.

---
James Sleeman
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robjg63

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#2163362 18-Jan-2019 16:59

Parents got that call from spark a couple of years ago.
Spark has been pushing to get phone only users off copper wires for a while now.

If your mum wants multiple phones, just buy a cordless one that has a base unit that supports multiple handsets.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

hio77

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#2163367 18-Jan-2019 17:15

Happy to look into it or pass it onto the relevant teams as required.

Sounds like she has accepted an offer to transition her copper service to wireless.

The whole last in the street stuff sounds like confusion of some sort. spark is not withdrawing copper.

In many cases wireless may offer a cheaper and better preforming service however.

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sbiddle

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#2163372 18-Jan-2019 17:37

Spark have been aggressively pushing people onto FWA for the last two years because they then don't have to pay Chorus for it so make far more $$. Copper is not being discontinued.

There have been a significant number threads on here that mirror this - mainly elderly people forming the opinion that Spark are discontinuing copper and they have no choice but to move.

michaelmurfy

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#2163377 18-Jan-2019 17:50

I've actually moved my Nana over to this service as it is cheaper for her. She likes it and has not had any problems with it.

Her plan also gives 5gb of broadband which came in perfect as I got her a photo frame for Christmas that allows family members to upload photos to it.

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atomeara

324 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2163384 18-Jan-2019 17:57

michaelmurfy:

I've actually moved my Nana over to this service as it is cheaper for her. She likes it and has not had any problems with it.

Her plan also gives 5gb of broadband which came in perfect as I got her a photo frame for Christmas that allows family members to upload photos to it.

I got my mum into Netflix, she has now shown it to her sisters and how easy it is to use (70's and 80's age bracket), there now all almost using more data than me with a flat of 20 somethings!

sleemanj

1490 posts

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#2163390 18-Jan-2019 18:05

I guess if FWA is cheaper for her phone-only with no existing fibre, then so be it, her saving money is ultimately less worry for me than her only being able to use a single phone socket, I doubt her sky box is plugged in to one, but maybe I should check.

As for only one on the street, you never quite know what is the actual story and what is "mild embellishment" (aka, extreme hyperbole) with my mother. Apparently they (Spark) had been nagging her fairly incessantly though.

---
James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

hio77

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#2163394 18-Jan-2019 18:13

sleemanj:

As for only one on the street, you never quite know what is the actual story and what is "mild embellishment" (aka, extreme hyperbole) with my mother. Apparently they (Spark) had been nagging her fairly incessantly though.

as i said, happy to look into the real story.

I highly suspect it has not been pushed but rather suggested

The team that do outbound sales are pretty on point with what they can and can't say. Saying something untrue as last in the street or you must move is a total no no.

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epr

260 posts

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#2163400 18-Jan-2019 18:41

hio77:
sleemanj:

As for only one on the street, you never quite know what is the actual story and what is "mild embellishment" (aka, extreme hyperbole) with my mother. Apparently they (Spark) had been nagging her fairly incessantly though.

as i said, happy to look into the real story.

I highly suspect it has not been pushed but rather suggested

The team that do outbound sales are pretty on point with what they can and can't say. Saying something untrue as last in the street or you must move is a total no no.

What the team say they suggested and what the end user experiences as pressure could be the same thing I think someone needs to do some serious polling on the people who have been "suggested" a change to make sure that it is one and not the other.

darkasdes2

428 posts

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#2163410 18-Jan-2019 19:15

hio77:

sleemanj:

As for only one on the street, you never quite know what is the actual story and what is "mild embellishment" (aka, extreme hyperbole) with my mother. Apparently they (Spark) had been nagging her fairly incessantly though.

as i said, happy to look into the real story.

I highly suspect it has not been pushed but rather suggested

The team that do outbound sales are pretty on point with what they can and can't say. Saying something untrue as last in the street or you must move is a total no no.

Good old saying the customer is always right.

I had to have some firm words with spark as my parents kept on getting hassled to move to wireless from copper

gbwelly

1243 posts

Uber Geek

#2163597 19-Jan-2019 10:24

This is not a one off and Spark need to investigate the practices of the sales team. I have been hearing about this 'we are removing the copper lines so you have no choice other than to move to wireless' story for the last year at least. Two weeks ago my mother asked me to speak to her elderly friend who had received this sales pitch and was suspicious about what they were trying to get her to commit to. I did so and explained that she could continue as she was, and there was no need to switch to wireless as far as I knew.

She is not losing her marbles and was quite clear about what the sales member told her. Namely that she had no choice, the copper was being discontinued, and she must make the switch. She hasn't switched. She has only voice, no internet, doesn't want internet BTW.

JoWairarapa

7 posts

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#2190632 4-Mar-2019 11:42

We switched to 4G broadband 3 years ago and while its hasnt been perfect its has been better than copper. Its better to bulletpoint the issues we have had and continue to have rather than make a novel.

Minimal dial up speeds on copper - for some reason out lines were bypassing the box 500m away and connecting to the urban exchange 14km away.

There is space in said box for more subscribers.

A tractor knocked out and severed the phone wire from the pole to pole on the road 2 years ago. We still are entertained about chorus staff not spotting it but driving up and down looking for the fault after a bit of rain.

Changed to 4G rural broadband, equidistant to 3 towers within LOS 10km and 4 within 12km range flat geographical.

As more and more urban subscribers are encouraged to go to 4G our speed has dropped dramatically and the towers are very definitely oversubscribed.

Call to Spark reveals......

we were signed up at our previous urban address (on rural broadband)
our area is blocked out and ineligible for rural 4G broadband (wait, hang on..rural, 4 towers within 12 km and 4G full signal)
Spark then threatened to cancel our broadband

A friend used a skinny 4G modem here, the upload and down loads speeds were significantly higher and it was much more stable. Even the phone signal was better, it was the same model modem, side by side in the same conditions with totally different results

So it seems Spark is intent on ignoring rural customers, if we happened to live in a city we would be regarded as being in the same suburb. While the towns around up has fibre or about to get rollout, the likelihood of us having stable useable internet is becoming less and less likely. We cannot change providers because we cant get another provider due to our address being locked out of the system. It really is a no win situation.

trig42

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#2190635 4-Mar-2019 11:49

They tried it with my parents, Dad called and asked if he should do it, it was no cheaper. At that time I checked the UFB timeframe for his place, and it was about a year out. They were on VDSL, about 40mbps download, so no need to change (way more than he needed). He changed to Fibre when it became available mid last year. Happy now.

hio77

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#2190644 4-Mar-2019 12:11

JoWairarapa:

A friend used a skinny 4G modem here, the upload and down loads speeds were significantly higher and it was much more stable. Even the phone signal was better, it was the same model modem, side by side in the same conditions with totally different results

So it seems Spark is intent on ignoring rural customers, if we happened to live in a city we would be regarded as being in the same suburb. While the towns around up has fibre or about to get rollout, the likelihood of us having stable useable internet is becoming less and less likely. We cannot change providers because we cant get another provider due to our address being locked out of the system. It really is a no win situation.

Hi Jo,

Can you provide me the details in a DM? I'll look into things.

Likely answer to your Skinny vs Spark issue is, the difference in firmware - there are two for the B315 that varies the band it prefers.

Suspect solution to your service would be a switch to B618.

It sounds like there has been a bit of an edgecase around your addressing, happy to look here.

You will have more opportunity to service on Spark than Skinny, Partially with recent changes.

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.