A pensioner in Wales cut off a village’s internet every day for 18 months with his old telly.
For a year and a half, Openreach were left puzzled and frustrated by the broadband problems in the village of Aberhosan, near Machynlleth.
Frequent tests showed that the network was working fine, yet for 400 or so villagers, connectivity was poor or non-existent from 7am each morning.
Villagers struggled to connect to the internet for 18 months. Credit: Wales News Service
Mercifully, a ‘crack squad’ of engineers have at last established the cause of all the problems – a ‘mortified’ pensioner and his dodgy old TV.
Dramatically recounting how the puzzle was cracked, Openreach engineer Michael Jones told North Wales Live: “As a team we’d been facing an ongoing issue in Aberhosan for months. As a final resort we decided to bring in a crack squad of engineers from the Chief Engineers Office who were based in other parts of the UK to investigate.
“Having exhausted all other avenues, we wanted to do one final test to see if the fault was being caused by a phenomenon known as SHINE (Single High-level Impulse Noise), where electrical interference is omitted from an appliance that can then have an impact on broadband connectivity.”
A 'crack squad' of engineers eventually solved the problem. Credit: PA
He continued: “By using a device called a Spectrum Analyser we walked up and down the village in the torrential rain at 6am to see if we could find an ‘electrical noise’ to support our theory. And at 7am, like clockwork, it happened! Our device picked up a large burst of electrical interference in the village.
“The source of the ‘electrical noise’ was traced to a property in the village. It turned out that at 7am every morning the occupant would switch on their old TV, which would in-turn knock out broadband for the entire village.”
The occupants – Alun and Elaine Rees – were said to be ‘mortified’ when they learnt their telly was to blame for the broadband issues.
Michael said: “As you can imagine when we pointed this out to the resident, they were mortified that their old second hand TV was the cause of an entire village’s broadband problems, and they immediately agreed to switch it off and not use again.”
And like that, Openreach had cracked The Da Vinci Code of broadband connectivity issues.
Credit: Wales News Service
Openreach Chief Engineer’s Lead for Wales, Suzanne Rutherford, has urged the public to make sure their electric appliances are properly certified, minimising the chances of further connectivity conundrums in the future.
She said: “Our team were delighted to have been able to solve the broadband mystery in Aberhosan and it’s testament to their determination and commitment.
“Sadly this isn’t quite as a rare as people may think. Anything with electric components – from outdoor lights to microwaves to CCTV cameras can potentially have an impact on your broadband connection.
“We’d just advise the public to make sure that their electric appliances are properly certified and meet current British Standards and if you have a fault, report it to your service provider in the first instance so that we can investigate.”
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