[BC] Digital TV dispatches UK coastguard

[Chris Gebhardt]

From:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060215/od_nm/britain_digibox_dc

LONDON (Reuters) - Lifeboats and a helicopter scoured the sea to track 
down an electronic distress signal -- only for coastguards to discover 
it came from a British retiree's faulty digital television box on dry land.

The coastguards were scrambled after a rescue coordination center in 
Scotland picked up what it believed to be a distress signal coming from 
the sea off southern England.

But communications experts later traced the signal to the digital 
television set-top box in the home of 67-year-old Mary Donaldson in the 
western town of Plymouth.

"We sent a helicopter out and two lifeboats before we discovered that 
the signal was in fact coming from inland," a spokesman for the 
coastguards said Wednesday.

Donaldson was at the cinema when the experts tracked down the signal. 
"We sent two officers there to investigate and they were still there 
when the lady came home," the spokesman said.

The incident late last month was the second time this year a set-top box 
in Britain has been blamed for a distress signal. Communications 
regulator Ofcom said both boxes were being analyzed but stressed such 
cases were extremely rare.
-- 
Chris Gebhardt
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