Seasons greetings, The " kids" have dragged us into the 21st century with a sky installation. Unfortunately I need to put a telephone extension in, to accommodate it. The only way is through an outside wall in the bedroom down the outside wall and back in to the living room. Do I need special cable for outside, or is the white stuff okay to use? Many thanks for any advice. Neil
aiui - you need uv resistant cable for outside use
Regards Jeff
I wouldn't bother.
FYI whilst Sky make it a contractual obligation you don't need the extension at all. If you have the system installed and it works then you can just leave it at that. Software updates are done via satellite.
The only "benefit" of the telephone connection is so you can "buy" interactive services of various sorts (all mediocre compared to the www), also Pay per View movies.
David
There is UV resistant outside stuff and you might prefer to use a darker colour anyway. However, even the white would deteriorate so slowly that it is not an issue. The Sky contract only requires you to have the box connected for a year anyway.
The PPV can be bought over the (voice) phone....
Given the cluefulness of many sky installers, simply mounting a telephone socket on the wall and not bothering to connect it to anything may well keep them happy ;-)
Sky should fit the extension themselves, and you only need to have it working for 12mths of the contract.
My phone connection comes right round the side wall of the house from the overhead junction box using indoor cable, installed circa 1977 by a bodger builder I suspect. The white plastic's all cracked up and must let the rain in but the BT man reckons its still OK, going by his sophisticated BT electronic tests and didn't think it was worth changing. It runs 2Mbit broadband with no problems
john
I suspect you're BT man was a lazy git, when you sign up for a phone line/BB they are supposed run a new connection point in regardless of whether it looks alright. Thats what you're paying installation fee for.
-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite
I never had a BT person call when I changed to BB.
I called them out for a hissy fault which turned out to be on the overhead line from telegraph pole to the box on my house's wooden board thingies just under the gable end. I thought I knew where the problem was and told the guy what to fix, but he proved otherwise with a reflectometer, so it turned into a high-tech vs DIY stand-off situation. That was 2 years ago and no problems since even with the manky frayed white indoor cable still in place.
john
Sky make it a contractual obligation to tempt you to use the PPV and nasty games easily. They also check up... You really do have to connect the box up to a telephone line to get the cheap installation (well, for the first year anyhow). We disconnected our phone from the box for a week while decorating and they called us up to find out why! Although they were very polite about it (said NP but don't forget to reconnect when you've finished) they did make it quite clear that if it was not reconnected they'd cease the service.
You can disconnect it after a year if you want.
Having seen some of Sky's ' installations', I fitted my own. But if you want yards of trailing flex across your room......
Dave
On Tue, 27 Dec 2005 11:58:32 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@snotmail.com (Paul) wrote this (or the missive included this):
Just disconnect from the telephone socket as soon as they walk out of the door. You only need it to book Sky BoxOffice movies or to play silly buggers on-line. (So stick it back in temporarily should you need it one night)
Has the system already been installed?
When we had ours installed the Sky Engineer did us a free telephone extension..
sponix
"Ron Clark" wrote
Sky boxes 'phone home' in the wee small hours every now and again.
sponix
Dave
Theirs. 0800 number
Well, yours, indirectly :-)
Sorry but that's a load of s**te, and I speak as a cable jointer on BT for over 17 years.
Mogweed.
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