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 the 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.
Matty_r@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
This is actually true though. With ADSL you needed a filter to split out the ADSL line with the phone line.
Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Go figure i did not know that
PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
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.
PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
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.