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The telecoms giant claims that electrical interference from faulty electronic equipment can bring broadband connections to their knees.

"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

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faulty power supply in a television can degrade the performance of your line."

And it's not only your connection that suffers, as BT found recently. "There was a faulty television affecting broadband services in a 200m radius," Pickering claimed. "Lots of people in that neighbourhood were experiencing connection problems because of one person in that area."

Pickering says BT had a hard time convincing the culprit of the problems he was causing for his neighbours. "It's very difficult to tell people they have a faulty television when they're watching it. In the end, we bought the guy a new television," Pickering said, before adding that BT won't be stumping up for a new television for every customer with a flakey net connection.

BT says it will soon launch an inexpensive filter that will combat electrical interference on home broadband connections.