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Thread ID: 143576 2017-02-16 17:28:00 Spark must be stopped Digby (677) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1431947 2017-02-16 17:28:00 I am very concerned and annoyed about Spark/Chorus for three reasons.

One They were given the bulk of the UFB roll out.
They were offered special concessions on price etc for this.
They are now (2017) saying they are not making enough money having to compete with low cost fibre offerings.
They are wanting to buy some of the other current UFB companies in Wellington etc.

If we are not careful they will end up the only UFB / telco in New Zealand.

I am also annoyed that so many people stick with them, even while they complain about their bad service!
Digby (677)
1431948 2017-02-16 17:37:00 Well they are rolling it out here...... in 2022 so you are lucky and we are in a large community that has several quite large businesses in it 10mins from a large town gary67 (56)
1431949 2017-02-16 18:39:00 I am also annoyed that so many people stick with them, even while they complain about their bad service!

Spark and Chorus are not the same company anymore.
Who do you suggest we use instead of Chorus? We don't get the choice there.

As for Spark, they're all crap. Vodafone much better, no.
pctek (84)
1431950 2017-02-16 18:48:00 While I don't want to come off as a supporter its not that simple.

First chorus tendered and won the contract and are probably the only company in a position to realistically do so at the scale they did. They weren't exactly 'given' it.

Second nobody is making money off the ufb rollout concessions or otherwise, they are all hoping to profit sometime down the track

3rd spark and chorus are completely separate companies and have been for quite some time. Choruses main source of income is the line fees they charge service providers including Spark and they have the worst of the maitenance costs.

Lastly we are too small a market for more than a few large players and it's not economical to build more than one network for most of nz. That's why no matter what ISP you sign up with you end up using chorus cable in almost every case. If there was money to be had without government involvement other companies would be building networks.
dugimodo (138)
1431951 2017-02-16 18:59:00 What a lot of people don't realize is Spark and Chorus are not the same company, Basically the ISP's have to deal with Chorus no matter who they are.

Got a customer who was having internet problems after moving to his new place, and is with Vodafone, no internet for almost a month, was blue in the face trying to get it resolved. Wasn't till I went and actually proved it wasn't his Modems, that we actually found the problem.

The lady at Vodafone went well beyond the normal fault findings, even took me into parts of their modem that I didn't know existed ( their backdoor setups) :D (Danger now I know) :p Anyway -- they determined that Vodafone were sending the signal to the place, it should have been working.

They sent ANOTHER service request to Chorus to sort out the problem. The actual problem was at a cabinet down the street, Several people both on Vodafone AND Spark were having the exact same problem, once the guy from Chorus replaced something in the cabinet everything came right. He was told ( by the chorus guy) that the connections all tested OK but a component was actually faulty.

So in this case nothing to do with ANY ISP.
Even though it wasn't Vodafone's fault, they DID compensate for the outage, and gave him quite a few free upgrades.
wainuitech (129)
1431952 2017-02-16 20:16:00 I am very concerned and annoyed about Spark/Chorus for three reasons.

One They were given the bulk of the UFB roll out.
They were offered special concessions on price etc for this.
They are now (2017) saying they are not making enough money having to compete with low cost fibre offerings.
They are wanting to buy some of the other current UFB companies in Wellington etc.

If we are not careful they will end up the only UFB / telco in New Zealand.

I am also annoyed that so many people stick with them, even while they complain about their bad service!

Maybe you should change the subject line to "Chorus must be stopped"
paulw (1826)
1431953 2017-02-17 09:58:00 I have friends in Stoke Nelson in a back section who got a complete free connection to fibre apparently because so few were taking up the fibre option yet we are still on ADSL above Wakefield (Nelson) Crazy I say. Arnie (6624)
1431954 2017-02-17 17:24:00 OK, yes my headline should have been Chorus Should be Stopped.

But I stand by my statement that they were given concessions to get the deal and more concessions after they found out they were going to lose money!
Digby (677)
1431955 2017-02-17 20:42:00 "Trump must be stopped"


There, fixed it for you :)
Zippity (58)
1431956 2017-02-17 20:58:00 If we are not careful Chorus are

Going to be H U G E
Digby (677)
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