No master socket? Help

Hi all,

I've moved to a new home and I'm waiting for my ISP to connect my home tomorrow. However it appears there's no master socket in the house and instead I've got what looks like a junction box? It's an old white square with a BT badge on it hanging from the ceiling by wires.

To make matters worse the previous people here appear to have trashed the box. All but two wires are severed. I presume this is going to need replacing.

Do ISPs do this for free or is this chargeable? And any benefit to getting a master socket installed instead?

A couple of images might help - inside and outside of the box.

If you have just moved in and are a new customer at that address then you should normally get the master sorted out at no charge if it is unusable, damaged or missing.

A telephone line only needs two wires, do you get dial tone when you plug a phone in (if there is a phone socket)

Hanging from the ceiling sounds a bit messy, and if it was ripped off the wall a chance the wires may be broken.

When ordering a telephone line should just need to make it clear a new master socket is needed, as only a junction box was present when you moved in (presumption is that this is an old property rather than new build) and a new master should be covered by line activation fees (say should, but if it looks like wiring was abused and is broken needing lots of work then they may charge, in which case recover from landlord etc)

Make sure the ISP includes an engineers visit - the engineer then should put in a master socket and sort any wiring issues.

We're taking a connection from our old address with us. So we're an existing customer moving home and going on a new 18 month contract. I'll see what talktalk says.

Sorting out a missing/damaged/illicit socket is the responsibility of the VOICE provider not the ISP. As you are moving to a new premises, even though taking your existing service, it is still a "new" connection.

Thanks for the advice. I just called talktalk and they agreed to fix this for free. They said however I have to wait until my line is activated, call them again and they'll book an engineer to instal a new master socket.

All sorted

Your house is star wired like mine was. One of the sockets you have will (should) be a master socket, it just does not have a detachable faceplate, like the more modern ones.

The challenge is to get Openreach to provide a new socket without parting with money.

If you want to have a new type master socket, I suggest you decide where you want the socket located and how the wiring should run, bearing in mind that the correct way to connect slave sockets is to use 3 wires, though many modern phones only need two.

For best results you should keep the incoming wire as short as possible and use a filtered faceplate with the router directly connected to it. This is more important if you have a long incoming telephone line and the inevitable weak ADSL signal.

Installing a new type mastersocket is not essentail but may give better results.

Talktalk have agreed to send an engineer to sort it for free.

I'm hoping they'll put a modern socket in rather than fix the old junction box as that old box has another 10m or so of straggly line to an old battered socket further in to the house. The line to the junction box also looks old and poor quality. A proper adsl killer if I ever saw one.

So hopefully the engineer will rip out the junction box and replace it with new line and a master socket.

I think Openreach routinely wire in a modern master socket free of charge when they attend a fault (e.g. line/broadband dead, crackle etc) at a property which is star wired, that's certainly what happened with me many years ago, so I would imagine most star-wired properties were upgraded via this route.

I'm not sure the OP falls into this category but it sounds like the line provider is happy to play ball.

BT attended today without Talktalk telling me they would. Lucky today was a random day off for me!

The engineer was awesome! Very chatty, very helpful and did a good job.

He ripped out all the old wiring and put in a nice new master socket for me. He even put it behind the TV by the router saving me loads of wires and hopefully improving my speed with a shorter internal distance.

Quite a bit of work done in and out but he said the connection was good.

ADSL speeds seem quite quite and more importantly the latency seems to be decent too.

And it was all free.

Happy customer

That's great in a way, but dodgy in a way.

As long as the connection does everything you will want in the future, nothing to worry about. However it's possible that the closeness to the TV could be a nuisance due to electromagnetic noise from it.

The important thing for now and for a while is that it all got done trouble-free. Enjoy.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As long as the connection does everything you will want in the future, nothing to worry about. However it's possible that the closeness to the TV could be a nuisance due to electromagnetic noise from it.

Sure, old CRT ones gave off a lot of noise due to EHT transformer etc. But modern LCD TVs are fairly 'quiet'.

A few years ago there were many instances of plasma TVs causing trouble - even those belonging to neighbours. Then many TVs these days have other electronic gear stacked under or next to them, possibly with cheapo power equipment.

I'm not intending to make the OP worry. Just warning that if he upgrades in the future to FTTC at current or much higher speeds, with 4G or whatever TV, he may need to reconsider the layout .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

A few years ago there were many instances of plasma TVs causing trouble - even those belonging to neighbours. Then many TVs these days have other electronic gear stacked under or next to them, possibly with cheapo power equipment.

I'm not intending to make the OP worry. Just warning that if he upgrades in the future to FTTC at current or much higher speeds, with 4G or whatever TV, he may need to reconsider the layout .

Most devices these days use switch mode power supplies. They typically operate at frequencies above 50KHz so yes they can generate some noise but decent ones are shielded. My Dell T7400 is within less than a metre of the hub, doesn't seem to be a problem. I would be more worried about decent wiring, which the OP seems to have got fixed.