Faltering Broadband Connection DC

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You'd probably have replaced your router, rewired the house and spent Elton John's wardrobe budget on your ISP's technical support line before deciding your TV was to blame for your faltering broadband connection. But according to BT, TVs are just one of the innocent-looking culprits that could have a catastrophic effect on your connection. Satellite set-top boxes, microwave ovens and even Christmas lights can put the brakes on your broadband.

"We've seen faulty set-top boxes that have caused lots of problems," said Ashley Pickering of BT Wholesale's broadband access solutions team. "It's generally the power supply - a capacitor that's gone a bit leaky and started to emit more [electrical] noise than it used to. A slightly faulty power supply in a television can degrade the performance of your line."

The electrical interference wreaks havoc with the bell wire - this is the line that used to make old-fashioned phones ring, and now does little more than act as a conductor for electrical interference, severely hampering the speed of your ADSL connection in the process. BT Wholesale showed PC Pro just how debilitating such interference can be in a demonstration at its Gatwick headquarters. It showed how an ADSL connection running at 3.8Mb/sec was reduced to only 700Kb/sec when a nearby fluorescent lamp with a faulty power supply was switched on.

So how can you tell if your home electronics are murdering your bandwidth? Pickering admits it isn't easy, largely because the device with the leaky power supply will probably still be functioning perfectly normally. It's often a case of trial and error: switching equipment on and off, one by one, until you find the one that's doing the damage to your connection. One handy tip is to tune an AM radio to 627KHz and listen for crackling when you turn the device on, as this is a sure sign of excessive electrical interference.

However, it might not even be your equipment that's dragging your broadband down. "There was a faulty television affecting broadband services in a 200m radius," Pickering claimed. BT's solution? To buy the bandwidth killer a new television. But there's certainly no guarantee that BT will be as sympathetic in the future, which is why it's working on a new device that could solve all these problems...

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