Mother of All Whistlers: Virgin Media superhub. Listen to recordings

Audio Virgin Media is resorting to sending its subscribers to Maplins and other electrical outlets to deal with its now long-standing whistling power supply problem that has blighted the company's troublesome* SuperHub modem/router combi kit.

Netgear, which supplies the equipment to the telco, has failed to comment on what has gone wrong with the PSUs despite repeatedly being asked by The Register. It's understood that a dodgy component is causing an annoying whining noise to emit once the SuperHub has been switched on.

Virgin Media told us in a statement:

Netgear has completed its investigation into this and identified the cause of the noise which a small number of customers have reported from a batch of power supplies.

While this is a standard power supply of which Netgear has shipped millions of units around the world without any identified noise issues, we are working with them to correct this.

Vulture Central has heard from many VM customers who have complained about having a whistling SuperHub, after we revealed the problem in October this year.

Since then, Virgin Media has been busily replacing the whistling PSUs only for many punters to complain that the problem continues.

The issue has got so bad that VM has advised at least one subscriber to go to Maplins and buy a replacement power unit for the SuperHub, who was then credited for the expense on their account by the ISP.

Sources have previously suggested to El Reg that the problems which have dogged the SuperHub since it was first deployed by Virgin Media in early 2011 are a hot topic of debate in management meetings at the company. It's understood that VM is desperate to replace the failing kit.

Officially, Virgin Media has said that the suggestion that the Netgear-supplied SuperHub was to be killed was mere "speculation" best ignored.

Meanwhile, for those VM customers not suffering earache from the whistling kit, we have a special treat for you courtesy of Reg reader Mark Rainey, who is on his FOURTH power supply for the equipment. He told us:

"The noise is killing me!"

Mark kindly - or perhaps sadistically - sent us some recordings of the SuperHub at its whining worst. So, without further ado...

Hellish ringing in your ears time

®

* For evidence of this look here and here.