Couple whose TV wiped out whole village’s internet for 18 months get new flatscreen
A couple who knocked out their village’s internet every time they switched on their old TV for 18 months have finally been given a new flatscreen.
Alun and Elaine Rees, who live in the Welsh village of Aberhosan, hit headlines across the world last week after engineers discovered their old second-hand TV had been causing widespread problems for hundreds of people.
The pensioners used to switch on their second-hand £30 TV at around 7am every morning to watch Piers Morgan.
So Good Morning Britain decided to help fix the problem, and sent in presenter Andi Peters to deliver them a brand new, giant flatscreen TV.
Andi said: ‘This is it – this is your brand new, tiny isn’t it, it’s a tiny TV. This means you can see Piers in ultra-HD crystal.’
Retired GP receptionist Elaine, 63, laughed: ‘It’s going up on my bedroom wall. Alun will manage as long as he has Susannah!’
She said it’s been a ‘busy week’ as the news has spread even as far as Australia and New Zealand.
Retired farmer Alun, 67, joked he has ‘refused’ to sign any autographs.
It comes after Openreach engineers made repeated visits to the rural village of 400 residents due to ongoing connectivity issues and slow speeds from 7am every day.
Tests showed the network was working fine and the engineers even replaced large sections of cable that served the village – but still the problems continued.
Openreach engineer Michael Jones said: ‘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.
‘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 it again.’
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