Tuatahi Compulsory Upgrading ONT - Call Centre Swamped

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Tuatahi Compulsory Upgrading ONT - Call Centre Swamped

FineWine

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#321479 20-Aug-2025 17:56

Received snail mail from Tuatahi that they wish to upgrade our ONT to the latest model. Original was installed 2014.

Rang to book the technician and was on hold for 100 minutes. When finally spoke to the lovely CS person, she was flustered and exhausted. Why? Because the Tuatahi management had just printed out a generic letter to 7000 households and did nothing to increase call centre staff. They have been absolutely swamped in calls, hence the 100-minute wait times.

Get your act together Tuatahi management, your call centre staff have burnt out.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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#3405907 20-Aug-2025 18:39

Interesting - what model ONT do you have currently? And what are they shifting you to?

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acsylaa

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#3405923 20-Aug-2025 20:06

bigreddog:

Interesting - what model ONT do you have currently? And what are they shifting you to?

They are moving away from huawei (HN8250Ts Hyper fibre ONT)

And are moving to Adtran from my understanding.

We have just had a few Hyper fiber connections swapped out for these.

https://help.sonic.com/hc/en-us/articles/7636761061655-AdTran-622v

I also have another going live on Tuesday Next week so will see what they bring to the Party then.

FineWine

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Nurse (R)

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#3405930 20-Aug-2025 20:57

But why ??

Who is paying for this ??

Or is this just built in obsolescence??

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

michaelmurfy

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#3405949 20-Aug-2025 23:29

FineWine: But why ??

Who is paying for this ??

Or is this just built in obsolescence??

From memory, they've got a few different ONT's on their network so it's likely some of their older ONT's are incompatible or unreliable with some network upgrades they're doing so they're forced to upgrade them. Not necessary planned obsolescence.

I don't think it is all of their ONT's, just a few of the very old ones.

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nztim

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TEAMnetwork

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#3405950 20-Aug-2025 23:56

Interesting my Mum was one of the first fibre installs in Hamilton in 2013 and she has not had any notices, would be one of the oldest ONTs

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

acsylaa

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Just Internet

#3405964 21-Aug-2025 07:43

FineWine:

But why ??

Who is paying for this ??

Or is this just built in obsolescence??

From speaking to TFF and some Upstream providers and TFF techs what i understand is the following.

They’ve implemented the rollout to allow for the planned End of Life on the hardware, like those really old first-gen black ONTs (we still have customers with these out in the wild).

TFF have been upgrading the core network recently and the ONTs are just the next step in that process. From what I know they’ve been testing Adtran for well over a year, so this isn’t some knee-jerk decision.

It’s not really “built-in obsolescence” either – the Huawei gear has basically hit end-of-life and doesn’t properly support newer services like Bitstream 3b / Hyperfibre. On top of that, moving to Adtran helps avoid Huawei supply/support risks and also ticks the box for all the security/compliance concerns (the whole “phoning home” paranoia etc).

And just to be clear – customers aren’t being asked to fork out for this upfront. That’s exactly what the tail costs cover (maintenance and upgrades).

So yeah, it’s more about future-proofing the network than anything else.

Im also picking it will have alot to do with one of the new 1000/1000 Hyper fibre services that is due to come out soon on the TFF network.

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FineWine

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Nurse (R)

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#3406206 21-Aug-2025 16:01

UPDATE

Tuatahi Technician has been out and replaced our old ONT HUAWEI EchoLife HG8240 GPON Terminal with HUAWEI EchoLife HG8240H5 GPON Terminal. This new terminal offers a maximum data transmission rate of 1Gbps (1000 Mbps) downstream and to 1 Gbps upstream

According to the technician they are only installing Adtran's into businesses, schools, government etc. If I wanted the Adtran then I would have to pay for it.

Connected into this new ONT is my old Spark Smart Modem VRV9517 with Firmware Version 6.00.26 build 01. Should I upgrade to the Spark Smart Modem 3 to take advantage of any benefits that the new ONT might provide? Taking into account that it would cost $150.

I am also mindful of the up-and-coming obsolescence of my Apple Airport Capsule with macOS 27, and I am thinking of other external drive backup systems for Apple's Time Machine app, so long as the ext HD or ext SSD supports SMB version 2 or later, the TM app will still work. Plus, Spark may release an even better Smart Modem with USB 3 or better by the time macOS 27 is released, that maybe I can hang a household NAS off. Lots of ifs there.

NOTE: the new ONT has not increased my speeds, but the technician said it should improve overall performance.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

freitasm

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#3406209 21-Aug-2025 16:29

I don't think you should change anything at this point.

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tripper1000

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#3406434 22-Aug-2025 13:22

Whoa, 100 minutes on hold! I've got better things to do.

I have about 1/100th the patience that you do. I would have hung up and when they were good and ready (and staff were running out of work) they'd call me to make the appointment.

I have near zero tolerance when a big company wants me to call them, particularly if the number they provide dumps me into a phone maze (that are inevitably designed to prevent customers from bugging staff).

raytaylor

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#3406458 22-Aug-2025 13:59

tripper1000:

Whoa, 100 minutes on hold! I've got better things to do.

Its not like they can just switch off the service. If they want to book a time to swap the ONT, they can contact me.
Its also why I install our ONTs on the outside of the house so that we dont need the customer to be home if we are doing a troubleshoot or ont swap.

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bigreddog

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#3407142 25-Aug-2025 08:28

You don't have to phone them... you can wait for them to ring you, or you can email them.

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TuatahiFirstFibre

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#3407592 26-Aug-2025 13:36

Hi GeekZone community,

Teresa from Tuatahi First Fibre here.

Thanks for the level of interest in our legacy ONT replacement programme - it’s great to see people engaged on the topic.

Just to clear up a couple of points:

Legacy ONT replacement programme: We began a gradual proactive replacement programme in June for around 7,000 legacy HG8240 Huawei ONTs on our fibre network. These older devices are reaching end-of-life.

The programme is being rolled out in batches and expected to be completed by mid-October. This work is part of our commitment to future-proofing our network and maintaining reliable performance for end-users.

Which ONTs are being installed: Currently, the majority of ONTs we install are the Huawei HG8240H5. For HyperFibre connections, we use the Adtran 622V ONT, which is supplied at no additional cost.

Contact centre wait times: Our service partner’s contact centre performance has been solid, with an average wait time of 26 seconds this month. The longer hold time mentioned in this thread was a one-off due to technical difficulties. Things are now back to normal.

For affected end-users:

We are replacing HG8240 Huawei ONTs with the upgraded model, free of charge.
Replacing the ONT is essential to maintain a quality connection. If it’s not replaced, users may start to experience service performance issues in the near future.
The replacement will be scheduled at a time that suits the end-user. In the correspondence to those affected, we advise a member of our team will be in touch to arrange an appointment; however, we provide a phone number and email address should they wish to make contact and arrange an appointment.
The replacement will result in a very short outage of less than five minutes.

If you would like further information, please email ontswap@tuatahifibre.co.nz

Thanks

Dairusire

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#3410811 3-Sep-2025 16:29

I'm a little surprised by some of the responses with speculation of planned obsolescence. Those units were released literally over a decade ago?

Things do eventually need to be replaced or upgraded. Not everything can or should be supported, Infinitum. IBM mainframes being the clear exception to that rule haha

noroad

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#3410814 3-Sep-2025 16:52

Dairusire:

Things do eventually need to be replaced or upgraded. Not everything can or should be supported, Infinitum. IBM mainframes being the clear exception to that rule haha

I see you and raise you a B52

bigreddog

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#3410818 3-Sep-2025 17:36

Forgot to update this with my experience - emailed afternoon Friday 22 Aug requesting the swap after I got my letter, Monday 25 August got offered time on Wednesday 27 Aug which wasn't going to work for me, so requested change to Friday 29 August. Contractor called 10mins (?) before agreed time to confirm he was on his way, arrived right at agreed time of 1pm, was gone by 1:04pm all done.

Couldn't have been easier. 5+ stars, would trade again etc etc 👍

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