Spark partners with Kiwi company to bring email home

Tuesday, 13 September 2016, 2:45 pm
Press Release: Spark

13 September 2016

Spark partners with Kiwi company to bring email home

Spark has announced today it will be moving its Xtra email service to New Zealand-owned email provider, SMX.

Spark will be seeking customers' permission to move their data from today and will progressively move Xtra customers to the new email platform over a three month period from January next year. The company will be communicating directly with customers to let them know about the changes and what to expect over the coming months. All customers will keep their existing Xtra email address.
Spark Home, Mobile and Business CEO, Jason Paris says that its decision to partner with Auckland-based SMX is great news for customers and for New Zealand business.

“Our customers tell us that their email service, including their @xtra.co.nz email address, is critically important to them. After a positive nine year relationship with Yahoo, we have decided to transition our email service to SMX, a New Zealand based provider. We know that email is a critically important service to our customers and we are dedicated to making this transition as seamless as possible for our users.

“To manage the migration securely, all customers must give us their permission on the spark website to migrate their Xtra email address, contacts and data. All those who register before 17 October will be in a daily draw to win $100 Prezzy cards. We’ll be in touch with all of them over the next few months, explaining the process and the benefits they’ll see,” said Mr Paris.

Bringing customers’ email data home

Mr Paris says the company is pleased to be partnering with a stand-out New Zealand company.

“SMX is one of the leading cloud email providers in New Zealand and we are confident in their ability to bring customers’ email data back home, safely and securely. Partnering with SMX will allow us to move all of our customers’ valuable email data back to New Zealand and host it locally in our own state-of-the-art Takanini data centre.”

Last year Spark successfully moved over 11,000 Spark business mailboxes to SMX on its new Business email platform.

Minor disruption to customers

Spark says it is doing everything it can to ensure minimal disruption to customers’ Xtra email service in the next few months as the company will carry out a significant amount of work behind the scenes to ensure the migration runs as smoothly as possible.

Once customers give permission for the migration their email accounts will be officially ready to move over to the new platform. It’s expected most customers won’t need to do a thing after that, only IMAP* users will need to make a small update to their email settings to access the new platform. Most of the migration work will be managed in off-peak hours at night, and the majority of customers are unlikely to notice any interruption of service.

Customers will need to opt-in to the migration process as soon as possible to ensure their contacts, calendar entries and emails are migrated from Yahoo - they will retain their Xtra email address.

Customers can go to www.spark.co.nz/email for more information or they can call a dedicated Xtra helpline on 0800 934 348 if they have any questions.

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