Fibre with an existing faceplate filter

I see that when BT install fibre they simply use an interstitial faceplate but I already have a filtered faceplate which I believe won't allow this simple fitting - I take it the engineer will manually transfer over my extension wiring?

Yep, either transfer your existing extension wiring to a 'normal' NTE faceplate and then fit the new faceplate filter. Or just use the existing.

On my install, the engineer adopted the first approach - transfer the extension wiring to a normal NTE5 faceplate and fit the interstitial VDSL filter. I believe this is the preferred approach.

In fact, the engineer installed a new NTE5 - the existing one wasn't that old and was undamaged, but was old enough to have a current style BT logo rather than the BT Openreach logo. I suppose he was going to have to open a new NTE5 for the faceplate, and as everything was unscrewed, it took him a few seconds to snip the incoming pair and connect it to the IDC terminals of the new NTE5.


The engineer took my old faceplate filter, despite it being privately bought. If I was quicker, I should have asked for it, as it was clearly a non-BT supplied one (it had IDC terminals for an unfiltered connection) and a friend could have done with it. I suspect it got thrown away along with its screws.

If you have an existing faceplate filter and wish to keep it, it may be worth removing it at the point you lose ADSL sync, especially if you have an IDC tool and are happy to reconnect your extensions yourself.

I have said it before - for best results a VDSL filter should be used. An ADSL filter will work but the results may not be as good especially for those with very high speed connection (60Mbps+). Down at the 30 to 40 Mbps there may not be much difference but still some.

I have just tried switching my VDSL for an ADSL one and there was a 1.5 Mbps drop in attainable rate and a small drop in SNR. Reverting to the VDSL the attainable rate returned to slightly above the original.

I already had a faceplate filter but the engineer still removed it and installed a new one when I had fibre installed the other day.

In reply to a post by David_W:

The engineer took my old faceplate filter, despite it being privately bought. If I was quicker, I should have asked for it, as it was clearly a non-BT supplied one (it had IDC terminals for an unfiltered connection) and a friend could have done with it. I suspect it got thrown away along with its screws.

Oh dear, I made sure he didn't take mine, which was no problem at all, but I had already thought of it before he came.

Engineer couldn't have been nicer. He did manually rewire my extensions.

I think he was happy when he saw that I had prepared for his visit, space cleared and extra light fitted. I also had modem and ethernet cables already installed (from master socket to office)