Old tech has engineers puzzled

Mwalimu-G

Mwalimu-G

Elder Lister
Old TV causes daily power, internet outages

Old TV Killed Broadband Service for 1.5 Years in Small Village

The village of Aberhosan.Dave Croker / Geograph

A team of engineers solved a broadband outage mystery in a small Wales village — linking daily use of an extremely old TV to breaks in service, according to an initial report from the BBC.

The residents of a small village called Aberhosan in Wales experienced daily broadband outages for the last 18 months.
Reportedly, the electricity went off exactly at 7:00 AM (local time) every morning but the villagers couldn't put their fingers on why that kept happening. However, the real reason behind the phenomenon turned out to be quite a surprise.

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Engineers from Openreach — a U.K.-based telecommunications company — used a monitoring device to spot the issue. After a while, the device caught an electrical interference in the village.

The interference turned out to be a powerful signal, one that is so immense that it affects the whole village's broadband, causing an outage. According to the BBC, the signal — called single high-level impulse noise (SHINE) — messes with other electrical devices.
The interference led the team to a homeowner with an old TV set. When the owner turned on their TV every morning the whole town's power went off. Apparently, the problem stemmed from the TV emitting of the same SHINE signal.
Happy endings in Aberhosan
After engineers diagnosed the TV set behind the village's perpetual broadband outages, the owner of the TV was "mortified" and they "immediately agreed to switch it off and not use it again" according to one of the engineers, Michael Jones, BBC reports.
Since the anonymous resident who owns the TV set turned it off, the power cuts have stopped in Aberhosan, and things returned to the old routine.

Funny how one TV set can create such a stir and lead to broadband outages in a whole village. One can never be too careful with their electrical devices, since they're a crucial part of modern life
-C&P from Interesting Engineering
 
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This is too nonsensical to be true. Mara broadband went off, mara power. Those are two unrelated networks.


Mwalimu-G said:
The interference led the team to a homeowner with an old TV set. When the owner turned on their TV every morning the whole town's power went off.
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Mwalimu-G said:
The interference turned out to be a powerful signal, one that is so immense that it affects the whole village's broadband, causing an outage.
Click to expand...
 
Nattydread said:
This is too nonsensical to be true. Mara broadband went off, mara power. Those are two unrelated networks.
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Signals and noise
John Price, Terry Goble, in Telecommunications Engineer's Reference Book, 1993
10.8.8 Impulse noise
Impulse noise consists of short spikes of power having an approximately flat frequency response over the spectrum range of interest. It is considered to be a voltage increase of 12 dB or more above the r.m.s. noise for a period of 12 ms or less.
This type of noise may be caused by a number of sources such as the switching of relays in electro-mechanical telephone exchanges. Although these “clicks and pops” are annoying to the human ear, it is reasonably tolerant. However impulse noise may cause many serious error rate problems on data or digital circuits.
The effects of impulse noise can be alleviated by the use of a wide band clipping circuit followed by a band limiting filter. This procedure first reduces the amplitudes of the spectral components and then reduces the number of components.
 
More information, even less clarity. What was falling out: was it the broadband internet or the electrical supply? The article alternates from one to the other.

IMHO, it was probably the internet connectivity, but the writer is confused.
 
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Nattydread said:
More information, even less clarity. What was falling out: was it the broadband internet or the electrical supply? The article alternates from one to the other.

IMHO, it was probably the internet connectivity, but the writer is confused.
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Unless the TV owner was the internet provider how do you explain the fact that once the TV was shut off the problem ceased?
 
Nattydread said:
You missed my point entirely Rafiki. What was the TV causing to fail: broadband internet, electrical power, or both?
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The simplest explanation is the only true explanation. Switch TV on everything shuts down. Switch TV off everything goes back on.
 
LeoK said:
The simplest explanation is the only true explanation. Switch TV on everything shuts down. Switch TV off everything goes back on.
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Sorry. Huwezi shikanisha hii. Let me find you a version that does not contain the ambiguity.

www.bbc.com

Internet: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

Every morning at 7am when the second hand TV was switched on, the village internet went down.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Notice that the article only mentions broadband? So did all other results. Now go back and read @Mwalimu-G's title and body.
 
Nattydread said:
Sorry. Huwezi shikanisha hii. Let me find you a version that does not contain the ambiguity.

www.bbc.com

Internet: Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months

Every morning at 7am when the second hand TV was switched on, the village internet went down.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Notice that the article only mentions broadband? So did all other results. Now go back and read @Mwalimu-G's title and body.
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No I will not. Very many decades ago I was taught that if you cannot explain a concept in a simple manner you don't understand it yourself. Switch old TV on problem switch old TV off no problem. Issue is TV. Period.
 
LeoK said:
No I will not. Very many decades ago I was taught that if you cannot explain a concept in a simple manner you don't understand it yourself. Switch old TV on problem switch old TV off no problem. Issue is TV. Period.
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???????

In this whole discussion, has anybody questioned that it was the old TV that caused the problem?
 
Back in the day, at an undisclosed coastal location, hizi scooter za Vespa would cause interference to your TV signal every time they passed near your house. Sometimes even switching off your TV ya kabati.
 
Despite many people trashing the story here, I somehow agree with it. Years ago, I had a neighbor who had a Chinese DVD player. Whenever he switched it on in the evening, the signals of our UHF TV's used to disappear. I also remember how the UHF signal in our home used to make the weak FM radio signal disappear. Radio waves have this kind of interference
 
Masgwembe said:
Back in the day, at an undisclosed coastal location, hizi scooter za Vespa would cause interference to your TV signal every time they passed near your house. Sometimes even switching off your TV ya kabati.
Click to expand...

Noticed the same every time the garbage truck passes near one of my BUDs.
 
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