When I did tech support for a UK telecoms firm, that was the easy way to fuck off an awkward customer with any kind of connectivity problem - stability, speed, whatever. Generally, people’s routers were connected to the same NTE as the landline.
“So what we’re going to do, is replace the ADSL filter, see if it’s a gubbed filter, it’s a nice cheap and easy fix. Can you remove the filter from the wall socket please?”
In fairness, it’s nothing short of sheer voodoo what they managed to do with the simple copper loop. As usual though, it was the rural communities that felt the pinch (and the gains) more than most though.
The chances of it being the filter were stupidly low, and I don’t think I ever had a case of the filter being at fault - but it was one of those potential issues that would make a customer look stupid (and £120 lighter) if BT tipped up and declared it a customer equipment fault.
In newer homes (at the time), there were NTE faceplates that had a filter built it, with individual ports for telephone and for data telephony cables. They didn’t last long though. Maybe they were stupidly expensive in comparison, maybe BT could see the fibre future and stopped producing them.
What you might be missing from the story is that the customer was more likely than not using a landline to call technical support.
The ADSL filter sits between the telephone line from the street and the telephone.
Disconnecting the filter is equivalent to yanking the telephone socket out the wall and if you do that during the call … no more call.
At this time many people were already using cordless phones and mobile phones were making inroads, so the link between the call dropping and removing the filter might not be immediately obvious to a clueless end user.
Source: I have had the misfortune of phoning telco helpdesk services where this kind activity would absolutely happen.
Yeah, people using mobile phones to contact businesses wasn’t really a thing, partly because mobile usage was still taking off when I was in the biz, but mainly because calls to freephone numbers weren’t actually free (or included in package minutes) at the time.
When I did tech support for a UK telecoms firm, that was the easy way to fuck off an awkward customer with any kind of connectivity problem - stability, speed, whatever. Generally, people’s routers were connected to the same NTE as the landline.
“So what we’re going to do, is replace the ADSL filter, see if it’s a gubbed filter, it’s a nice cheap and easy fix. Can you remove the filter from the wall socket please?”
click
Beautiful.
ADSL filter thats pretty damn funny! its like the blinker fluid equivalent of tech support
This is actually true though. With ADSL you needed a filter to split out the ADSL line with the phone line.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSL_filter
Go figure i did not know that
Every day’s a school day.
In fairness, it’s nothing short of sheer voodoo what they managed to do with the simple copper loop. As usual though, it was the rural communities that felt the pinch (and the gains) more than most though.
The chances of it being the filter were stupidly low, and I don’t think I ever had a case of the filter being at fault - but it was one of those potential issues that would make a customer look stupid (and £120 lighter) if BT tipped up and declared it a customer equipment fault.
In newer homes (at the time), there were NTE faceplates that had a filter built it, with individual ports for telephone and for data telephony cables. They didn’t last long though. Maybe they were stupidly expensive in comparison, maybe BT could see the fibre future and stopped producing them.
What you might be missing from the story is that the customer was more likely than not using a landline to call technical support.
The ADSL filter sits between the telephone line from the street and the telephone.
Disconnecting the filter is equivalent to yanking the telephone socket out the wall and if you do that during the call … no more call.
At this time many people were already using cordless phones and mobile phones were making inroads, so the link between the call dropping and removing the filter might not be immediately obvious to a clueless end user.
Source: I have had the misfortune of phoning telco helpdesk services where this kind activity would absolutely happen.
Yeah, people using mobile phones to contact businesses wasn’t really a thing, partly because mobile usage was still taking off when I was in the biz, but mainly because calls to freephone numbers weren’t actually free (or included in package minutes) at the time.