Moved to Spark Ultra Fast Fibre MAX mid January and has been fine until the 8th of Feb. Since then upload has been (relatively) crippled to 30Mbit/s inside NZ, 8Mbit/s OZ, 1Mbit/s US, Most noticeably, I could saturate upstream with my NAS backup to Amazon cloud drive with 5 connections uploading at 100Mbit/s each, now I won't get more than 1Mbit/s per connection. The helpdesk haven't been much help - power off ONT, power off router, wait, power on ONT, power on router. No change, repeat this time resetting router to factory default. I'm in Christchurch. Used both Spark Huawei router and an ASUS RT-AC87U. Any ideas? No wifi being used, QoS is off. It's driving me a bit nuts.
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Problems with Spark Ultra Fast Fibre MAX?
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Spark SIP issues in South Island.
Spark are having issues with IP Centrex and Voice Connect in the South Island. I have just had this confirmed over the phone with them. But for whatever reason they haven't got anything on their Service Status page about it.So if you are on IP Centrex or Voice Connect in the South Island and having issues with calls failing to connect, it may well be this.I do have to wonder about the point of having a service status page if they don't keep it updated. Wasted my time investigating whether it was an issue with our phone server as the Spark status page listed no problems with their network, yet when I phoned them they were well aware of an issue.
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Pop / iMap / Timing out issues
I am still getting calls from clients trying to do change overs or caught in the change over.Pop3 refuses to authenticate correct usernames / passwords. It may work once or twice then fails many times. Spark says to set server timeout to 3 minutes as part of the remedy but even that fails.Setting client back to using pop.yahoo.com and full email address fixes the issues but hellishly slow responses. Setting xtra with a wrong password as a test - times out but the same test against yahoo comes back with an instant fail. There are authentication issues going on.Spark still haven't resolved some boxes pop locked or locked by another process issue. Got escalated to yahoo weeks ago.iMap, pop all very intermittent for some clients. 3 people in the same room, all with three different email addresses but tied to the same account can have different experiences and then swap symptoms and issues.Talking to spark help desk people at the gym - they are getting bombed with over flow calls and still major issues with this whole process. They do not look happy. I have three clients who 7 - 10 days down the track are still not resolved.
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"Smart One Bill" Price Rise
My dad got notice today of a rise in the price of Spark's Smart One Bill. It's now $5.99.My dad was also under the impression that he didn't pay anything to have his cellphone charges added to the bill for his landline - at least that is what he was told by a representative from Spark a few years back. Maybe it has changed since then? Anyway, he is considering going back to prepay because of the charge.
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SMX Rejecting legitimate emails
We are beginnig to get calls from clients with SMX issues (and not just the pop timing out and horrible issues with old xtra mail).Two issues: 1 - Emails rejected as SMX decided an SPF record without the explicit ip address or domain for the sender but with a ~all type ending - indicating allow other senders but in a grey sort of way meant dump all mail for that domain as it wasn't coming from te explicit ip given. Made a mess of the fact workers move around the country at times. So SPF now has accept all without caring who it comes from on the end of it. - Lessened security to allow basic emails to get through.An email containing a 20 page PDF newsletter, with belmarrahealth.com as part of URL referencing an article on their website, got bounced by SMX and not delivered to their client that they host. That business will be missing out on work as it took three phone calls and a number of emails to get the simple email through with SMX.They claim their upstream provider said belmarrahealth was compromised. Couldn't find it compromised in the 120 plus black lists I consulted. also have to ask the question, if SMX host mail for this company, what the hell are they doing sending it or referring ti to an upstream provider? Who is the upstream provider? SMX should be the end point.SMX seem to be in such a flurry to not send spam and not be another yahoo that they are dumping legitimate mail all over the place. how about - first do no harm? Very under whelmed so far.https://mxtoolbox.com/domain/belmarrahealth.com/
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Unable to MMS a Voda contact. Everyone else OK.
I've been trying to send some progress pictures to a client via MMS for the last few weeks but nothing goes through to him.He can MMS pictures back to me, and we can send txt messages, but I cannot send him any pictures.All my other Voda contacts receive pictures fine, and the same on his end. He has an iPhone 5c and I'm on an android SGS7E sourced directly from Spark. My wife is on voda with an iPhone 5s and we message pictures back and forth fine.We definitely have the right numbers on eachothers phones.Is this something that I need to contact spark to figure out, or is it something phone related?Any tips?
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What exactly does this statement mean?
This is part of the privacy statement for the SPARK Internet assistant download: Also, your use of the Licensed Software may modify Internet-related software settings on your computer and will set networking configuration parameters on your computer. By agreeing to this agreement, you grant Spark New Zealand the right to change the Internet-related software settings on your computer and set networking configuration parameters on your computer.Is giving this kind of access to changing my settings a possible risk?
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8000 emails re-downloading!
I am a Spark Yahoo customer, using Outlook on my PC. Today each time I connect, 8,000 previously downloaded emails are trying to re-download. Why is this happening, and how can I stop it, please?Many thanks
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Spark's overuse charges for business broadband clients
Hi All.A valued business client of mine, who has been with Spark for as long as they can remember, is facing an 'excess usage' charge in the thousands of dollars for exceeding their broadband plan allowance.Over the December/January holiday period while their office was largely unattended, a software error (which can be proven) resulted in some recently installed online backup software continuously re-uploading the same piece of data to a server across the other side of town. The client's 200Gb plan was significantly exceeded, with several Tb of traffic generated. The fibre plan they were on has over-use penalties of $1.50 per Gb, and the resulting bill is several thousand dollars higher than normal. This client arranged plan changes and upgrades over the phone, and were never directed to the My Spark portal to set up usage alerts. After some discussion, in recognition of this information not being provided, Spark have offered a 50% discount on the overuse charges, leaving several thousand dollars still to pay.Spark have advised my client that "we do not actively monitor our customer's usage. Given this, we would not have been aware of the high usage, and therefore excess charges, until the bill was generated and you raised the issue with us."However if you look at the residentials plans, Spark states on their web site "When you go over your data limit, we won't charge you for every extra megabyte you use. Instead we charge you for blocks of data. It costs $5 per 5GB up to a max of $50. After that you'll charged as though you were on the unlimited data plan for the rest of the month."So which is it? Do Spark actively monitor customer plans for high usage or not? Or do Spark deliberately not monitor Business Broadband clients usage in order to be able to swindle them out of as much money as they can? If Spark proactively support their residential clients to prevent unexpected bills, why are they not protecting their business clients in the same way?Spark?Sincerely,Mike
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Mail Redirection To Xtra and SPF
We have had a couple NDRs over the last week or so based on Xtra's SPF policy.We have an SPF record locked down to our mail servers IP address.However, when we send an email to an address which is then redirected to an Xtra address we get an NDR - presumably because it is looking at the forwarding servers IP address rather than ours.E.g. user@fakedomain.co.nz is forwarding to fakedomain@xtra.co.nz. If I send a message to user@fakedomain.co.nz it bounces back saying it was rejected by mx.xtra.co.nz based on SPF policy. Sending directly to fakedomain@xtra.co.nz is fine.Mail forwarding of this nature is not uncommon, nor is having an SPF record. Surely this isn't expected behaviour by the Xtra servers?
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Samsung Galaxy S6 completely dead battery - warranty?
Hi all, Over the past week my galaxy S6 bought new in April 2015 started to completely run through its battery midway through the day even though it was charging to 100% overnight And then after Several days of that one morning it was only on 60% after charging all night it just died during the morning and I haven't been able to charge it since. I have tried multiple different charging cables and wall plugs since then and nothing has been able to charge it. The phone is 22 months old so still within warranty period. Does anyone think I have a chance in hell of getting Spark to fix this considering there is a crack in the glass on the back from November last year. I am willing to fight them on the CGA and the phone being of acceptable quality to last for a reasonable time ie the warranty period. Because it's pretty clear to me that the battery has just gone in the phone. I wonder if this is something to do with the fast charging. I just don't want t waste $85 on an inspection fee if I'm going to get nowhere because of the crack. I'm aware that they can't charge the inspection fee if it's covered under warranty. Cheers
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Any server room guys here? We're moving into one of your old buildings. What are these cables?
Hey Spark, I'm overseeing the IT side of an office move to one of your old sites. It's decked out in a way I've never seen and I'd like to know what I'm dealing with! I'm assuming these are for patching office ports to another board of the same ports, which is hard wired to cables that we plug into the switches. Some are big head, which appears to do four ports at once? Is that correct?Then there are thin ones which I just found and I guess they do a single port each? http://imgur.com/a/e2hTy
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Spark partners with Enable to trial fibre broadband installations in Christchurch
Just received: The fibre broadband installation process may soon be easier for Christchurch families and business owners.Spark and Enable have teamed up in a Christchurch trial of 'street in a week' - an initiative aimed at coordinating the upgrade to all homes in a neighbourhood who want fibre broadband with Spark, over the course of a week.Rather than installations taking up to several weeks, and most customers having to be present for two site visits, street in a week concentrates resources in one geographical area so that customers can get connected in a single, pre-selected day.Trials are taking place in parts of Avonhead, Riccarton, Burnside, Russley and Sockburn this week, followed by trials in parts of Shirley, Papanui, Richmond, St Albans, and Dallington next week. Up to 180 households with Spark copper broadband are being offered the opportunity to upgrade to fibre within a significantly shortened timeframe.Spark's Head of South Island, Paul Deavoll, said, 'Enable is an important partner of ours, as the local fibre network provider for greater Christchurch. We're thrilled to be collaborating with them on an initiative that we hope will result in more of our customers being able to quickly and smoothly move onto fibre.'Steve Fuller, Enable CEO, said, 'We're very excited about the opportunity to partner with Spark on what could be a game-changing approach to installing fibre broadband - particularly if it means we can provide a better customer experience and shorter connection time for fibre broadband customers in our community.'Nationwide, 31% of New Zealanders who have fibre laid in their street have so far chosen to upgrade from copper. The 'street in a week' initiative aims to make it as easy as possible for more New Zealanders to make the move.
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Using FritzBox with Spark
Hi allJust wondering whether any GZers have any experience with configuring a 2degrees-supplied FritzBox on Spark (fibre)?We're currently with 2deg, thinking of switching to Spark but I would want to keep using my FritzBox. I checked with Spark whether it would work and the best they could do was "it should do" which doesn't inspire much confidence. Anyone know how this could be done? Cheers
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No dial tone.
Hi,Originally had naked ADSL and a VOIP phone line (WXC). The phone jacks in the house are distributed via one of these HBG-1008 all working fine with the VOIP line.Have got rid of the VOIP line and have had a spark phone line added to my account, after connecting the blue leads to the HBG-1008 from the ADSL splitter, there is no dial tone on any of the phones (1 wireless 1 wired) the ADSL is working fine. If I take the plug that is plugged into the ADSL modem and plug it into the phone there is no dial tone here either, should I be able get a dial tone here?The wired phone has no sound at all, the lights on the keypad do not light up, no power going to the phone by the looks of it. The same on the ADSL output of the splitter, once again should a phone work on the ADSL output of the splitter?I'm using the gel connectors to connect the phone line that comes in from under the house directly to the ADSL master splitter in the wiring closet. No other jacks in the line. There is no ETP. BTW my ADSL went from under 4Mbps to over 9Mbps after ripping out the old phone lines.Have a chorus technician coming out later in the week, but could this be a faulty splitter? Thanks
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Customerlink
Hi folks, quick question - can anybody confirm whether or not a spark customerlink number can terminate at a Vodafone mobile? Thanks in advance.
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GWS Outage
Anyone else affected by the Mayoral Drive network node outage? Started about 7.30pm tonight
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Telecom T-Stick cost me $60 for 15 minutes browsing: How can you avoid this happening?
I have an old Telecom HSUPA USB Modem T-Stick Model MF 636 made in China by ZTE Corporation.I use it as an emergency wifi source for when wifi is not available on holiday or when our home broadband is down.I have a SIM card with a prepaid amount on it and I buy blocks of 300mb of data when I need to use the T-Stick.Because our house internet was down recently, I purchased a block of 300mb of data from Spark for $10 which can be used for 1 month.So I plugged in my T-Stick to my laptop (very slow 7.2 Mbps enabled) and I spent about 15 minutes on Trade Me much of which was waiting for pages to load.After this time, I checked my Spark account and found to my surprise that, not only had the full amount of 300mb of data been used, but also a further 170mb had been charged against my account at 30 cents per mb reducing its balance by $50. So it cost me $60 to browse TradeMe for 15 minutes and absolutely no video was downloaded during that time! Good one Spark, $4 per minute to use their internet!So I phoned Spark and a lady in Manilla said that my computer may have been downloading updates in the background and because I had used this amount of data, it would be unfair to other users if Spark was to refund any of the $60 I had spent for the 15 minutes of browsing. I tried phoning again later and, after much discussion, another lady in Manilla said that as a one-off goodwill gesture Spark would refund me the $50 excess usage, but they couldn't credit me with any of the $10 paid to get the 300mb because I had obviously used 470mb altogether. I said that my web browsing on TradeMe would probably have used no more than 20mb of data but I was given the impression that I was very lucky to get the $50 excess charges refunded!I was told by Spark that I should make sure that Windows 10 updates are turned off when using the T-Stick. However, it doesn't look like any major Windows updates were downloaded during the 15 minutes I was on internet and I can't think what else would download approx. 450mb of data without my being aware of it. In any event, I couldn't see how you can stop Windows 10 from doing automatic updates (can anyone tell me please how to do this)?Now, mobile phones when on mobile data can be set to not download program updates, but Spark said this was impossible for the T-Stick to do. So, I have concluded that the T-Stick is completely worthless as the computer can download all sorts of things in the background and run out your expensive mobile data in no time!If anyone else uses a T-Stick for Spark mobile data I would be interested to know please whether you have experienced a similar problem and how you avoid your computer downloading a lot of unwanted data when you are browsing!Fred
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New Lows in support and functionality - Thanks Spark
Client: Emails getting bounced back as spam when sent via xtra emailTry to log onto web portal. Cant. Hack username and password out of email client to ensure its not wrong. It's not. xtramail.co.nz redirects to some other site which redirects to a spark portal with crud about checking if we have migrated .Put in email - we haven'tmigrated - surprise surprise. Log in. Redirects to yahooo.comSign in again.Redirects to NZ yahoo.Click on xtra mail - page not found. Backup , click on mail - forced to sign in again. Sign in fails. Phone spark as reset system down. TWO hour ZERO MINUTES - ZERO SECONDS - phone call drops. I think they are now ditching calls if the queue gets too long as the zero minutes and zero seconds is too much of a coincidence for me. Re phone again - we're closed. Bollocks!!!Phone again, talk gibberish to phone, get forced to choose phone number want to discuss so put in 0800 225598 - sparks number. Actually get to person. Ha ha ha.Log in process above - gone through. Exactly same email address and password now works (copied and pasted and also typed in two different browsers.).Got to go to yahoo mail not xtra mail log in symbol.Mail client now open. Search for address bounced back as spam. No results in spam or sent or recevied. That's really funny as the address is inside two emails I can see in the list, where I was emailing client re the issues. opening the emails shows the exact term I'm searching for. Copy and search again - still doesnt find it. Advanced search - still doesn't find it. Order by sender - options greyed out. What a pile of wasted space kraps. You guys are going from bad to worse. Oh by the way, you'll be receiving another complaint as when I ask to talk to a supervisor I do expect to be sent to a supervisor and not have some twerp hang up on me - especially as the first thing I had done was make him take my number so he could call back if he lost the call. Just a reminder the S in ISP stands for service - how about actually providing some. 2.75 billable hours thanks to kraps stuffed systems. Client still cant get the email through.
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Spark Wireless Broadband
Speed test results:Sparks test site:28.97 down41.58 up Isn't that backwards?
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