Old BT Junction Box - What should i do with it? :)

Hi All,

Just moved into a house that has one of the old old BT Junction Boxes from the 60's / 70's and it has an old master socket feeding off from it.

I have an order placed for ADSL2 with Fibre being available in the next few months so i am thinking about replacing this box. Its also in the hallway looking just beautiful. I want to move into the loft... the line comes into the house from the roof.

I know its OpenReach property and i guess ill have to pay them to replace it, my question is... is it worth replacing? will i gain any speed / better service by replacing it?

No phones will be used on this line, router will be plugged directly into master / test socket.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

J

If there is one phone socket, and only one, then its current set up will not be detrimental to ADSL or VDSL services.

I would strongly suggest that if you wish to have the line shifted in to the loft , you get your Voice CP to get Openreach in and shift it.

I found what claimed to be a genuine BT master socket with filtered face plate on ebay. Nothing on it to suggest that it is a genuine BT socket, but it works fine.

Whether you gain any performance improvement depends in part on how strong the signal from the exchange is when it gets to your property.

I have found keeping routers out of the way in the attic convenient.

Do not touch it yourself. Get it moved by OR - arranged through your voice service provider.

Could any cable guy do it? i just bought the house so if anything comes of it.. ill say it was like it when i moved in?

OR will do it for £130 i believe, socket shift.

In reply to a post by WarioTBH:

Could any cable guy do it? i just bought the house so if anything comes of it.. ill say it was like it when i moved in?

If it is just one socket, there will be no real difference. If you move it, you are likely to cause a fault and a huge headache for yourself.

In reply to a post by WarioTBH:

I know its OpenReach property and i guess ill have to pay them to replace it, my question is... is it worth replacing? will i gain any speed / better service by replacing it?

No phones will be used on this line, router will be plugged directly into master / test socket.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

J

That depends. When you look at the junction box, does it have one cable going in and one cable coming out?

Many old installations were to a 'star' type layout whereby you had multiple phones in a house, all going back to the junction box rather than the master socket as it is now.

If it's literally one going in and one going out, you won't have any problems keeping it. The only thing that may affect you is if the terminations inside the box are corroded.

By law only Openreach can replace it. What you do with it is entirely at your own risk since as you've mentioned, it's Openreach property.

Do you have a picture of it?

If there are no hardwired extension into the back of the master then you won't see any advantage in replacing with a new master socket. Provided any extensions are connected via the socket on the front (and fed through a filter if they are voice only) it will fine. You can use a microfilter of course, but it is possible to put an extension socket with built in filter and both voice/xDSL output next to the old master and wire up any (voice) extensions via the filtered output of the extension socket.

Not as neat of course, but legal and technically OK.

Like this (ignore the fact it says ADSL - they are just low-pass filters for the voice extension and work find for any xDSL service).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Combined-Filter-Telephone-S...

NO.

It is not your property to interfere with.