Beer Fridge Caught Interfering With Cellular Network

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."

Comments

More pertinent information on beer fridge

[RyoShin]

The linked article is far more about the internal 'robot' and very little about the beer fridge. While perhaps the intent of the /. post, I was far more interested in how the beer fridge could have caused such an issue. Thankfully, TFA has a link to another, far more interesting, FA:

Telstra engineers say any electric spark of a large enough magnitude can generate radio frequency noise that is wide enough to create blackouts on the 850mHz spectrum that carries our mobile voice calls and internet data.

Engineers said the motor in the beer fridge was causing the interference.

It includes an image of said fridge, which looks like something from the 50s/60s (maybe? I don't know, I still have people yelling at me to get off their lawns.) More modern models probably have much better, efficient motors that don't cause this kind of issue.

Mr Halley said Telstra was increasing its black-spot detectors as Australians flocked to smartphones, and the rapid expansion of services revealed some very odd "ghosts in the machine". [...] These included faulty automatic teller machines, lights and illegal phone and TV antenna boosters.

No mention of the resolution, but I assume it involved unplugging the fridge. (I wouldn't be surprised if he paid more in electricity for that thing per year than just buying a new, medium-sized fridge.)