Residents of a small village in rural Wales can now breathe a sigh of relief after engineers identified a source of interference that resulted in the regular shutdown of the community’s broadband internet service.
According to a report posted to the CNN website, the village of Aberhosan was experiencing daily internet service outages every morning around 7 am for a period of 18 months. Repeated investigations by network operators turned up little that could explain the daily outages, and even replacing cables that serviced the area did not mitigate the problem.
Finally, Openreach, the company that runs the digital network in the United Kingdom, deployed their chief engineering team to investigate whether the source of the problem might be a single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), a form of electrical interference emitted from certain appliances that impact broadband signals. Using spectrum analyzers, engineers walked throughout the village to identify a potential source for the noise.
The investigation ultimately led to a vintage television in the home of a village resident, who habitually turned on the set every morning at 7 am, resulting in the shutdown of broadband services.
Openreach reports that the owner has “retired” the vintage television and that there have been no subsequent broadband outages in Aberhosan.
Read the complete text of the CNN report on Aberhosan’s broadband interference case.
