How an old television caused 18 months of broadband internet woes for an entire Welsh town

For more than a year, the residents of a small Welsh town would lose their broadband internet every morning at 7am.

The bizarre mystery stumped the 400 residents of the small town of Aberhosan, and frustrated many baffled engineers.

But now the failing internet saga has finally been solved. The cause? A single old television.

A group of British engineers visited the town, tested connections, replaced cables and walked about the village in torrential rain as they searched for the cause of the internet issue, The Guardian reported.

Finally, after 18 months of investigating the issue, the engineers had a breakthrough. When using a device that picks up electrical interference, they found a “large burst” of interference from a particular house at 7am.

Engineer Michael Jones told the BBC that a resident’s old television was emitting a single high-level impulse noise (SHINE), which caused electrical interference in other devices.

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.

[Source: stuff/bbc]