BT line with phone and broadband.
Broadband is working OK and that has its own socket on the master socket.
I can only get the phone working if I plug directly into the socket behind the face plate on the master socket. If I plug into the socket on the faceplate, I don't get anything at all. BT have suggested that the micro filter on the faceplate has failed, but I've replaced that with a new one, and that doesn't work either.
Any suggestions on where to start looking next ?
Thanks
Adrian
tempted to agree with them so far, be wary of calling them out as they'd be likely to charge in this situation.
Any other extension wiring?
Can you confirm there are no external wires into the faceplate?
I might be tempted to get a new faceplate and try it myself, saving the hassle and risk of an engineer attending.
It's possible a pin has been damaged/bent/out of place.
That is the next thing to check: if there are wires attached to the faceplate, going to a second cable to other parts of the house, they may be suspect. Unplug everything from phone sockets (if any) elsewhere in the house and see if the problem still exists.
However if even a standalone filter (ie not the one on the faceplate) causes the same problem, then it looks as if it's extension wiring.
When you press the green telephone "off hook" button, do you get any sound at all (eg a click)? What about if you take the phone off hook and then plug/unplug the lead into the filter (standalone or faceplate)?
What tone does another phone (eg mobile) get if it tries to ring the landline when it's not working?
Adrian explained :
Any extension wiring you have, will be connected when the faceplate is plugged in, so that wiring comes under suspicion when it works directly, but not via the faceplate. That was the whole idea of the unpluggable faceplate, to be able to isolate the extension wiring easily by the customer.
That was my thinking too..
Yes, there are a number of other phone sockets around the house, none of which currently have phones plugged into them.
I'm not ruling out a wiring fault, but it seems odd that it has died when there hasn't been any obvious change to the system. The last time it was disturbed was in late 2012 when I changed from ADSL to FTTC.
Adrian
Do you mean you have replaced the frontplate or that you have plugged a "dongle" type microfilter in ?
In message , Harry Bloomfield writes
Thanks.
I've just removed the extension wiring from the faceplate, and I can now get the faceplate working (unfortunately, its location doesn't lend itself to leaving a phone plugged in). Tracing that through is not going to be fun.
Adrian
Replaced the faceplate. No dongle type microfilters are in use here.
Adrian
It might help us to know the exact type of master socket and filter. For example is it the modern "Type 5C" as shown on:
see also:
I've had a similar problem, more than once. The solution was, oddly enough, replacing the router/hub. See if you can borrow one, switch it for yours, and see if that clears the problem. If not, perhaps the whole master socket needs replacing? According to a local OpenReach employee, lightning strikes in the area may have caused some damage, but not enough to stop all functioning of the hub. It's happened to my phone service three times now, and each time, replacing the hub has fixed it.
In message , Graham J writes
Looking at that page, scroll down to the "Master socket with two sockets" section, and it looks like the middle one of the three, broadband on top, phone on the bottom.
Adrian
Or do you have the latest type of Openreach socket which has a separate phone and data socket ?.
Any recent thunderstorms or lightening in the area ?.
In message , Andrew writes
Yes, see elsewhere in this thread for a description.
Not that I'm aware of.
Thanks
Adrian
OK so the fault is with the extension wiring.
How many extension sockets are there?
If more than one, the wiring may go from one to the next, in a daisy chain, or there may be multiple wires joined at one or more extension sockets. You will have to inspect them all, and make a sketch to show how they are connected.
It then ought to be possible to isolate each cable, and reconnect them one by one starting from the wiring that you disconnected from the faceplate filter.
It would be worth making a simple tester with a battery and a lamp, so that you can check each pair. If there's a convenient earth point available you can check one wire at a time.
Be aware that the punchdown connectors very rarely accept more than one wire reliably. Two wires will sometimes work, but where I have seen three punched down together the last will usually fall out.
If you can prove a break along the length of a cable then you may have a problem with mice or rats eating the PVC insulation and chewing through the copper conductor.
Sounds like a problem in the phone wiring after the socket. Disconnect and see if a phone now works on the faceplate one.
4 extension sockets in all, and they are daisy chained.
Thanks for the warning.
The leg between extension 2 and 3 is under the floor, so if there is a rodent issue, that's likely where it is, but it is ~10 years since there was last any sign of a rodent visiting.
Thanks
Adrian
In message , Adrian writes
I'm happy to report that the problem appears to have been resolved.
Going back to the days of ADSL, extension sockets numbers 2 & 4 in the chain had in built filters. It looks as though the problem was with the face plate on number 2. When I disconnected wire 2 (Line B ?), I could get a dialling tone on the handset plugged in between it and the master socket, when I reconnected line 2, it didn't work. Fortunately, I had a spare, plain, face plate which I've swapped it for, and I'm now back in business. It looks as though Mr B.T's diagnosis of a failed filter was right, just the wrong one.
Many thanks for the suggestions.
Adrian
Yes, I think some of us were fed astray when the OP said that he'd tried a different filter. I assumed that he'd tried a separate "dangly" filter, as opposed to a replacement faceplate, and therefore that he'd eliminated the house wiring and yet still had the problem. When he said that it was a replacement faceplate, with the extension wiring reconnected, that changed things a bit - we hadn't after all eliminated the extension wiring from the equation.
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