In Raleigh, North Carolina, customers of Time Warner Cable are seeing blurry, pixelated TV when Verizon LTE phones are used in the same room.

A report by WRAL in Raleigh says that "Time Warner Cable in the Triangle recently placed some channels, including WRAL, on the same spot in the broadband spectrum that serves Verizon's 4G LTE data service."

Those channels are transmitting on the same 700MHz spectrum also used by Verizon, and the cable system is seemingly unable to block out the signals. The WRAL story points the finger at cable boxes being incapable of dealing with interference, although it's also possible that a bad coaxial cable could be causing the problem. Cable systems are allowed to use the same spectrum as wireless carriers, as long as they keep the transmissions on the wire and don't interfere with cellular service.

We've contacted Time Warner to ask what's causing the problem and how widespread it is, but we haven't heard back yet. In a statement to WRAL, Time Warner said, "We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on a solution that will resolve this problem definitively in the coming weeks."

UPDATE: After publication, Time Warner told us the following: "It's limited to the Raleigh market and WRAL...we expect to have this resolved in the next several weeks, we need to do some additional work to make sure the frequency to which we're moving WRAL will be visible to all customers. Obviously the change won't require any action for most customers, who watch WRAL via a set-top box or digital adapter. We haven't found the issue specific to any box or class of boxes."

Wireless consultant and engineer Steven Crowley told Ars that "the metal cabinet [around a cable box] should be a good shield" for blocking interference. "I suspect a more likely source of interference getting into the box is RF energy conducted into the box via power cable or coaxial cable connections (with shielding for those cables less than perfect inside the box, but generally good enough)."

WRAL owner Capitol Broadcasting Co. "said Time Warner plans to shift the station and FOX 50 off the 700MHz band" but that it won't happen immediately, WRAL reported.

"This is not just a Time Warner Cable issue, but is an issue for the entire cable industry," Capitol Broadcasting Company VP Sam Matheny wrote in a blog post.

As for the problem in Raleigh, WRAL quoted a local man named Jeff Lipack who said his TV picture was being distorted when his wife's Verizon LTE phone was being used in the same room.

"Time Warner officials said such 'hyper-local interference' might be resolved simply by taking the phone to another room," WRAL wrote.

Lipack's problem was solved when his cable box was replaced. WRAL was able to recreate the problem in its own offices, however, as you can see in this video: This type of interference is not unheard of. One Ohio resident complained of similar interference in a comment on DSLreports. "I've lived in just about every part of Columbus proper and the 'burbs and TWC always has gotten a lot of interference since they never really bothered to fix the old aging '70s style system," the commenter wrote.