[jonifen]

Of course prevention is better than cure, but the short-term costs that would be incurred by such a project would be massive. Going into the long term they would probably balance eachother out so it would be a worthy investment. Some of the BT boxes I've seen around look proper solid yet the NTL/Telewest boxes just look no stronger than a cheap computer case.

I think NTL need to have a quick scan around - perhaps ask for some information from the contractors who fix the problems out in the field (give them something for doing so over the period of a week or two - maybe a day extra holiday for the year or something) and find where the worst condition boxes are, and do them first and see how it goes.

Something monitoring the boxes to see if they've been opened etc is a great idea - its been done with computers, so I see no reason why it cannot be done with something like that too.