Beer Fridge Caught Interfering With Cellular Network 231
aesoteric writes "A man's backyard beer fridge in Australia has been busted interfering with the cellular network of major carrier Telstra. Engineers used an internally-developed software 'robot' to crawl log files from the network and sent a field team out to pinpoint the cause of the interference."
Respect Your Elders, Telstra! (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, Australian beer fridges have the honor of being among the first commercially successful applications [wikipedia.org] of refrigeration technology(the principles and some early prototypes were developed elsewhere; but Australia's not-exactly-robust ice-harvesting industry didn't imperil the cost effectiveness of the systems in the way that it did in places that actually have ice). Telstra should turn down whatever RF 'noise' the kids are listening too these days and let Grandpop play what he wants!
Irrelevant history aside, what kind of dodgy does a motor have to be to generate enough RF to degrade a cell system in the course of performing relatively modest compression duties for a small refrigerator?
Re:Respect Your Elders, Telstra! (Score:5, Interesting)
It just has to be dodgy enough to interfere with a very specific set of frequencies. In Hellstra's case this is 824â"849 and 869â"894 MHz.
This is why you are asked to turn off your phone on aircraft, this is what a malfunctioning fridge can do to mobile reception, think about the interference a malfunctioning phone will cause to communications and navigation equipment (which operate on similar frequency ranges to mobile phones).
But TFA glossed over a very important part of the story, after the offending fridge was deactivated... How did the owner keep his beer cold?
Re:How (Score:4, Interesting)
eh? where I come from people plug in their fridge and let it go for 30+ years. what are the brushes of an ac motor going to look like then?
heck the one I grew up with (from the 60s) my dad took it down to my grandmother's in mid 1990s, he gave it a freon charge right before plugging it in and after my grandmother's death my uncle is using it today. Surely that thing puts out some RFI though who'd notice out there in farmland....