Optus' urgent product recall

David Heath
Tuesday, 13 December 2011 20:50

Your IT - Home IT

A few days ago, an urgent recall notice was issued for a Power Line Adaptor Optus had been providing to its MeTV customers.  The units pose a serious electrocution hazard.

A "Power Line Adaptor" is a device which can carry network signals over the power wires in your home from your ISP's device to any other location in the house.

Recall notices have been posted on the Optus website and on the ACCC's Product Safety Recall site strongly suggest that anyone with an Optus-provided white Netgear Power Line Adaptor model XAV2501 should unplug it immediately and stop using it.

According to the ACCC message, there was an error during assembly of the device which reversed the wiring to the phase and earth pins on the pass-through power socket:

240V AC will be present on the Earth terminal of the pass-through socket outlet and the Active terminal of the pass-through socket will be grounded to Earth. This will present danger of an electrical shock under the following conditions:

(i) the device plugged into the pass-through socket has a 3-prong AC cable;

(ii) the AC cable is attached directly to the plugged-in product, not through an external AC-DC power adaptor; and

(iii) the plugged-in product has an earthed exposed metal surface.

Under the above circumstances, exposed metal surfaces of the plugged-in product will be at a Voltage of 240V AC. Any person touching the plugged-in product would therefore experience an electric shock.

Note that the device is provided as a kit which also includes a black adaptor; this black unit does not seem to be affected.

To the best of Optus' knowledge, all affected customers have already been sent a replacement unit and instructions on how to return the faulty one.

If any of iTWire's readers have subscribed to the Optus MeTV service (which included these adaptors) prior to November 23rd and has not been contacted in this matter, they should urgently telephone Optus on 133 937 or contact Netgear at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it