No phone master socket

[john smile]

The old house we bought has no master socket (NTE5 socket?) but just 6 normal phone sockets. They are all working fine.

The drop wire coming into the house is connected to a matchbox size white box (BT80A).

out from this box are three cables. Two grey and one white. The two grey goes under the floorboard. The white is old so it must be the original, and this white cable goes in to another box (matchbox size box with round edges), splitting into two and down under to the floorboard. someone had added two grey extension cables to the first white box (BT80A). As far as I know this is illegal today because you can not wire anything into the line but only after the master socket (NTE5).

If I contact BT, will they came and fit a master socket for free? I have not contacted them yet just in case they will force me to pay for one.

[James Salisbury]

Try a repost to uk.telecom there are some BT linesmen on there who will give you chapter and verse on the subject.

[Owain]

Are you sure one of them isn't a master socket? Have you checked for a capacitor inside them all?

LJUs predate the NTE with the removable front.

They will charge you I think £25 for "regularisation" - there may (will?) be a visit charge on top of that.

If it's all working you don't need to change anything do you? :-)

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

Not according to The Price List:

at the bottom "Conversion of hard-wired master socket to Linebox and Regularisation of illicit master socket:"

[john smile]

No master socket. 100 percent sure.

[John Rumm]

Which would suggest you should have problems with some types of phone not ringing... since it is the master socket that provides the bell wire. You ought to have a surge arrestor near the entry point of the lines that is also usually provided by the master socket, as is also the test shunt resistor. Without which your line would fail some of BT's auto test checks if there were no phones connected.

[John Rumm]

"Illicit master socket" eh, they make it sound so naughty! ;-)

[Andy Hall]

Well...... there are still people who think that customers are subscribers.

[Lurch]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 03:52:21 +0100, John Rumm mused:

I was thinking that. I think the OP thinks that a master socket is a box with BT written on it when it is just a normal socket effectively. Still something missing smewhere though.

[Frank Erskine]

It may have been used previously with, say, a 700-type telephone, which has its own capacitor arrangement. This was quite common practice in the early days of PST.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well its simple enough to fit one.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sounds like it was converted from hardwired phones to plug in ones by someone without clue.

Why not just fit a master yourself? It's hardly rocket science and they're not expensive. It could then be where/how of the type you want it rather than just thrown in place like BT usually do.

[Dave Liquorice]

I'd say at least one of the sockets already in place is a master. The OP has only looked in the two junction boxes not inside all the sockets. There are three wires connected inside the second junction box.

What the OP wants is an NTE not just a master. So that the demarcation point between BT and his wiring is defined. You can certainly buy NTEs and as you say fitting isn't difficult. Getting one with a BT logo might be harder. Wether BT have a record of who has or hasn't got an NTE and if they would care if they have and are called to a fault to find an NTE where, in theory, there isn't one is another matter.

[The Natural Philosopher]

IME what you do is lay in some cat5 or phone cable from the existing to where you want it to go and use a nice buried junction box to hook it up to the BT wiring, reconnect the old shit to it, call BT and explain that 'during refurbishment you noted that the phone line had an obsolete socket on' and BT come along, tut tut and pop a new one on for free.

ThIS at least means there is a proper disconnect point for other stuff that you may or may not want to add in: OTOH BT normally don't seem to care if you wire your own master, but they will charge you if they have to come and make it work :-)

Copious tea biscuits and coffee plied upon the engineers also makes them, more forgetful of any non standard work that they may have noticed, contrariwise an irritable customer who gives them a hard time may render your line as 'needing complete (chargeable) re-installation, guv'

[The Natural Philosopher]

On the whole my experience has been

'Ok,its not standard, but its working so I won't comment'

or

'Ok, it doesn't work and lord knows what is going on here: we will charge, cut back to definite BT stuff, and put in a proper socket'