For several months the inhabitants of the small Welsh village of Aberhosan lost their broadband connection at 7.00am every morning.
Repeated visits to the village by engineers failed to resolve the problem despite repeated tests showing the network was working fine.Large sections of the cable that served the residents of Aberhosan were even replaced by British Telecom engineers, but to no avail.
Eventually the chief engineers office was called in. Considered the SAS of the company, they are sent to areas considered too difficult for anyone else to reach.
The engineers walked up and down the village in pouring rain from 6am using a spectrum analyser and eventually found the cause of the problem.
A couple were in the habit of having a cup of tea in bed at 7am and switching on their TV to watch the news. Their TV was an old 14 inch cathode ray tube set. The transformer in it was faulty and caused what is known as a Shine (single high impulse noise event) which produced a powerful radio wave that exists in the same frequency range as that used by the broadband service. Once the interference had got into the couple's power supply, it had followed the copper broadband wire out of their house and up on to the telegraph pole feeding other people's homes.
Repeated visits to the village by engineers failed to resolve the problem despite repeated tests showing the network was working fine.Large sections of the cable that served the residents of Aberhosan were even replaced by British Telecom engineers, but to no avail.
Eventually the chief engineers office was called in. Considered the SAS of the company, they are sent to areas considered too difficult for anyone else to reach.
The engineers walked up and down the village in pouring rain from 6am using a spectrum analyser and eventually found the cause of the problem.
A couple were in the habit of having a cup of tea in bed at 7am and switching on their TV to watch the news. Their TV was an old 14 inch cathode ray tube set. The transformer in it was faulty and caused what is known as a Shine (single high impulse noise event) which produced a powerful radio wave that exists in the same frequency range as that used by the broadband service. Once the interference had got into the couple's power supply, it had followed the copper broadband wire out of their house and up on to the telegraph pole feeding other people's homes.
