Faulty DSL filter

Bt Openreach engineer came today to investigate intermittent fault causing both voice and broadband drops over last week or so - no noise on line; speeds OK. Reckoned to test the DSL filter and pronounced it faulty! What's the lifespan of a filter?

1 day to 10+ years.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 30-Jan-14 22:22:44)

In reply to a post by PeeBee:

What's the lifespan of a filter?

They work until end of life� which is defined as the day it stops working

Usually 1 day longer than the guarantee period

Flippant comments aside. What are the signs of a faulty filter?

I can find no advice re changing them at a particular point in time - therefore what is the lifespan?

As they are usually included in the box with the ISPs router, does this make them the ISPs responsibility?

Having spent hours allegedly troubleshooting my fault, at no point has anybody mentioned filters.

Smells like BS from Openreach to me.

I don't see why a filter should really be any different from any other electronic item. I've often heard it said that electronics have an early life failure - a matter of months, or last for quite a few years.

However I'd have thought that realistically the life of a very inexpensive piece of consumer electronics is fairly unpredictable. And the problem with a filter, compared to (say) a cheap radio, is the difficulty of knowing that it's failed.

If it was suggested to me that a filter had failed, or if I suspected the possibility, I'd replace it to see if it made any difference.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

However I'd have thought that realistically the life of a very inexpensive piece of consumer electronics is fairly unpredictable.

And that is the main reason the military pay so much more for electronics.

There is no lifespan for a cheap consumer grade product. They are being pushed out as cheap as possible using the cheapest components available on the day they were made. There might be a 2 second test on each one and maybe a little more testing and characteristic checking on 1 in every 1,000 or 10,000 but that is it. If consumers want filters with a guaranteed lifetime of 5 years then they will need to pay three, four, five times the price - but no one wants to.

In reply to a post by MHC:

There is no lifespan for a cheap consumer grade product. They are being pushed out as cheap as possible using the cheapest components available on the day they were made. There might be a 2 second test on each one and maybe a little more testing and characteristic checking on 1 in every 1,000 or 10,000 but that is it. If consumers want filters with a guaranteed lifetime of 5 years then they will need to pay three, four, five times the price - but no one wants to.

But it's worth it if the only way of knowing that its faulty is by an engineer attending to test and charging £50 for the privilege.

In reply to a post by PeeBee:

But it's worth it if the only way of knowing that its faulty is by an engineer attending to test and charging £50 for the privilege.

It isn't the only way- keep a couple of spares and swap them out if you suspect a problem. Much cheaper and a heck of a lot quicker than waiting for an engineer to miss the appointment!

Filters, especially cheap ones, are notorious for failing
One way to check of course is to use the test socket behind the BT faceplate. If that resolves the difficulty then the fault is on your side and you need to fix it or pay someone to do it for you.More often than not it will be a failing filter but it can also be the cat or a mouse chewing the internal wires, or damp. Whatever, BT won't pay and will expect to charge to fix

The real answer is to fit a faceplate to the master socket that provides a separate outlet for your broadband router, isolating it from the internal phone wiring. After you've done that (for as little as a tenner) you can do away with all your microfilters because they aren't needed any more. At the same time, in many (most?) cases you'll find a good step up in broadband speeds

Down to pure chance really, if you happen to get good ones and someone doesn't smash into them with the vacuum cleaner then they could go on forever.

Some were made rubbish to begin with, I seem to recall a review site cut some open and found that one make had the ring wire connected through, meaning it could not filter properly on a regular home extension.

Personally I like the VDSL faceplate filter, it screws down, has sockets for testing, and allows for a hard-wiring a broadband "extension", but for the price you could get 6-7 cheap filters.