Official News - page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: CORDLESS PHONE INTERFERES WITH AIR TRAFFIC

by Hazed

Over the past year or so, pilots cruising the air traffic sector between Manchester and Central Scotland had been entertained by something unexpected on their radios - snippets of conversation from a used car dealer. One pilot explained, "We could hear the general chit-chat and talk about cars and phone numbers. But we never heard enough to find out who was talking or where it came from."

The problem then became worse over the summer, when the good weather provided perfect conditions for the signal to reach even further into the sky, so the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom was forced to spring into action and attempt to trace the source of the conversations, because of concerns that the haggling over used motors might block out vital instructions from controllers on the ground.

An eavesdropping plane was sent up and it tracked the signal to Northern Ireland. Detector vans then followed the trace and narrowed down the source of the signal, finally centering on an address in Ballymena. Ofcom obtained a search warrant and moved in - discovering that an illegal cordless phone had been the cause of all the problems.

The dodgy handset had a range of up to 10 miles, as opposed to the 100 yards or so that is usual for cordless phones. The car dealer who owned the phone had no idea of the havoc he was causing whenever he discussed a transaction over the phone. Ofcom confiscated the phone and there have been no further cases of interference.

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