Disconnecting Telephone Master Box

Just tape the wires up with some insulation tape.

Sound like a good time to sink the box for a flush mounted type.

Adam

In article , TheScullster writes

If you leave it open circuit for a while, it may be picked up by automatic fault monitoring equipment which will flag a fault on your line, so they will be aware that something is going on. If you can connect the wires to a master in another location it will remove that possibility.

I wouldn't make any attempt to notify Kingston.

Tape will be fine to insulate the wires.

"fred" wrote snip...........

Thanks Fred How long's a while? Or how often is the line polled?

Phil

Or get some wire and extend the present wire temporarily to the box somewhere out of the road of the plasterer .

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Remove the box from the wall, then re-attach to the wire. Wire ends insulated, and test resistor is still in circuit. Job done -)

(if you want a bit more protection, tape a plastic bag over the socket)

Officially you are not allowed to touch the wiring behind the BT master box...you may well have some slack cable in the box, if so, you should be able to take off the faceplate(s) but leave them connected, then unscrew the back box from the wall (assuming it is a surface mount box) then reattach the faceplate and leave it dangling for the plasterer to plaster behind, obviously if there is only a small amount of slack cable then this is going to get in your plasterers way, so you would need to disconnect the wires and wrap them (separately!) with insulating tape until the plasterer has finished (If the socket is surface mounted, then this is an ideal opportunity to sink a new box into the wall.

IIRC, BT do an automatic line test every 24 hours, but even if the box is disconnected, they won't actually know what you have done, and I doubt they will investigate until you report a fault anyway.

Some years ago my line went dead and as I rarely used the 'phone and had better things to do than wait in for BT to not turn up, I just left it to see what would happen. Measurements proved that the fault was outside the house so they could fix it without me anyway. It was several _months_ before it "righted itself" and then probably only because a friend reported it. More recently when it died, their online fault checker said there was nothing wrong, even though there were 0 volts on my end of the cable. So I'm not very impressed with the automatic checking. Maybe things have improved since.

Chris

In article , TheScullster writes

Sorry, I'm out of touch so dunno. I see Toby has suggested it is every

I doubt anything would happen for days on end but it will be there in the fault log if anyone cares to look at it.

John's suggestion of extending the wires to make a connection to a master in a bag seems sound, plasterers are used to working round obstacles.

Quite agree, the only time anyone is likely to look at the log is if you screw up the wiring so baddly and have to report a "fault" to get service restored.

As others have suggested, either do a temporary lash up to a master socket, or just dis and tape the wires. Even if they do poll the line automatically, there's little chance they'll do anything about a 'fault' unless you complain to them.

Had some major phone alterations to do when I was redecorating the lounge. Long story, but the drop wires come in to a secondary socket and are then taken to a master socket in the study via the loft space, with some of the multicore being used to feed back to the secondary socket. (BT wired it that way when I had ISDN a few years back) Tidied everything up, including a new outlet for SKY, got rid of the secondary socket at the point oif entry, connected and dis'd the line several times, never heard a word from BT.

TheScullster has brought this to us :

I seem to remember reading somewhere - once per day during the early hours.

tape them up

No. Apart from the ring stuff, and teh spark suppresors, an empty socket master is open circuit more or less.

More or less the same when I demolished the house the phone lines went to.

One half of an ISDN was disconnected for over a year.

Many days nothing was connected at all.

Rewired it to the new house, and BT never blinked.

BT hardly ever notice with ISDN - it does not get periodic testing, and it sounds dead even when working (the dialtone etc is generated in the NTE9 box on the premises).

(Apparently a not unknown problem in some towns, is when a lineman is searching for a spare pair in a cabinet, and finds what sounds like a nice dead line (your ISDN pair) and re-uses them!)

It includes an 'out of service' circuit precisely to allow you to unplug the phone without the automatic testing equipment complaining - or others getting a fault signal when dialling in.

Well with the "out of service" resistor being 470k the line is pretty damn close to open circuit even at AC as it is series with the capacitor.

I suspect it's more of "bleeder resistor" for the instruments bell circuitry than anything else. Leaks away the nasty peak ringing voltage that could be stored in instruments.