Will the Openreach engineer...?

New build house, no room at the fibre cabinet so Zen have twisted my arm and I'm getting a 1Mb ADSL service on a new line.

The position for the master socket is in the living room. I asked the developer to arrange for my master socket to be in the cupboard under the stair and they said they'd sort that with Openreach. The developer also ran Ethernet cable from various rooms to the cupboard.

The day we moved in an Openreach engineer turned up. I didn't request him and said we hadn't ordered a phone line as yet but he wanted to fiddle with the cables anyway and installed a Master Socket 5C in the living room even though I mentioned I was expecting it to be in the under-stair cupboard.

I now have an appointment for an engineer to come and connect me to the POTS and super-slow broadband. Will s/he be persuaded to shift the master socket under the stair?

Currently behind the master socket are three cables, two in use. One is obviously the incoming line. Then the OR engineer has connected one (what looks like) Ethernet cable to the 'extension' connectors which (I assume) goes back to under the stair. But what I really wanted was the incoming line to connect directly with one of the cables so as the master can be under the stair. Then the extension would run back using the other Ethernet cable to the living room.

So OR's cable pops into the living room where it connects to a cable taking it to the master socket under the stair. From there another cable returns to the living room and connects to an extension socket.

Will I get this done?

(Its all so I can have the broadband router hidden away and a couple of other rooms connected using Ethernet.)

Thanks!

Is the extension cable from the Master Socket 5C connected to the front face plate or the back screwed on faceplate?

If its attached to the front removable faceplate (assuming its a MK4 face plate) then its a data extension, if its not connected to the front face plate and is connected to the 3 wire snap on connector then its a phone extension.

I assume you wanted all the modem / router and any other networking stuff to your cupboard under your stairs, if its a data extension then you can still do this.

As for getting the engineer to relocate the master socket, I very much doubt they will do it without a fee of about £129.

But TBH I think what they have done is better, assuming its a data extension they have added, I say this due to your phone line is filtered at the shortest possible point, if your master socket was installed where you wanted it, your physical line would be longer reducing your speed more.

Paul

It depends on what �TRC banding� Zen have put on the provision order ... If some has been �pre-paid� then you should be able to request the NTE where you require it.

Cross your fingers you don�t get a contractor, as little as possible, seems to be their motto.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

It depends on what �TRC banding� Zen have put on the provision order ... If some has been �pre-paid� then you should be able to request the NTE where you require it.

Cross your fingers you don�t get a contractor, as little as possible, seems to be their motto.

They asked the developer for the master socket to be installed in the cupboard, not Zen.
Unless I miss understood what they said

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Is the extension cable from the Master Socket 5C connected to the front face plate or the back screwed on faceplate?

Here's a picture https://imgur.com/a/q8IFe (which you'll need to tilt your head if you want to see it in reality, left is top).

The extension is connected to the main body of the faceplate. I can take the front bottom off and see the extension cables come through and attach to connectors on �my side� of the faceplate. There�s nowhere to connect cable on the removable part of the faceplate.

So its a phone extension?

As for getting the engineer to relocate the master socket, I very much doubt they will do it without a fee of about £129.

Yea, but, they were meant/asked to put it under the stair in the first place. But really they weren't invited. If they hadn't turned up unexpected I'd have had more time to tell them what I needed and a discussion about what was going where.

assuming its a data extension they have added, I say this due to your phone line is filtered at the shortest possible point, if your master socket was installed where you wanted it, your physical line would be longer reducing your speed more.

Is a few more meters going to make that much difference? The modem is not going in the living room, that�s a red line. So either its connected via a �data� connection from the faceplate as described, or on an extension or (as I anticipated) directly to the master socket under the stair. Whichever of those option I choose its still another 15 metres of cable between the modem and the exchange.

Or does having a �data� extension mean the modem is closer to the exchange? I�ve not heard of this before. Does having a �data� extension - by which I assume means an extension without the voice part of the spectrum - mean I can have as long a cable as I want. But that doesn�t make sense to me. Surely until the signal gets to the modem its subject to the usual loss strength etc�?

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

They asked the developer for the master socket to be installed in the cupboard, not Zen.
Unless I miss understood what they said

Yes, correct, I asked the developer who said they'd ask Openreach. I'm now asking the developer if they did. I haven't had any discussion with Zen about this. Should I?

Maybe I could sumarise this by asking:

If you're an OR engineer and your confronted with cable added by others can you place the master socket on the end of that cable or is it a case of no, not our network cable...?

There is a bit of confusion about Data Extensions. Basically these are completely unfiltered. They carry both data and voice. The modem or modem component of a modem/router simply ignores voice frequencies.

The filters we all use, either danglies or filtered sockets, filter out broadband signal frequencies from the phone service. (In both directions). Otherwise you wouldn�t be able to use the phone for the racket. You�ve almost certainly heard a modem on the other end of a line trying to connect to one at your end. Probably when you�ve accidentally dialled a number that has a fax machine on it.

This is why technically you can connect a modem directly to any socket without a filter. Assuming it isn�t filtered at the master by a filtered faceplate. The special A/B connectors on a filtered faceplate simply bypass the filtering.

The feed cable looks like two pair UG .... so that looks very much like where the builders intended the NTE to go.

It�s easy enough to shift, if you know what you are doing ...

I�m sure the engineer would bypass this by crimping through to provide it where required .... BUT you don�t always get a visit on an install these days, they just switch it on.

I�ll summarise by saying, depends on the engineer .

This looks to be a doddle - ask politely, offer tea.

Just ask Zen if they�ve put any TRC banding on the install ... just as belt and braces.

Here is an image with all the sections separated: Master Socket 5C + MK4 Faceplate not too sure if you have a MK4 filtered face plate so where exactly is your extension cable (Ethernet cable) connected to the crewed down pushfit crimp terminal with 5 3 2 written on it, or is it connected to the clip off front plate to the terminals.

So going by my attached picture looking at the middle and bottom parts, are you saying its connected to the middle section or the bottom section.

Middle would make it a phone extension, bottom would make it a data extension.

As for adding the extra few meters may or may not make a difference, but you said you will be getting 1Mbits over ADSL, so you are already on a long line, I was trying to get the most out of your connection.

Sure adding length to the line adds attenuation due to losses in the cable, but filtering the phones + any other phone extesions reduses the chance in them inducing noise onto the line, which is why the ISP says try it in the test port on the master socket with all the removable faceplates removed.

BTW whats at the other end on the extension cable?
Like whats it terminated into?

There is noting stopping you from moving the extension from the phone extension terminals over to the data extension terminal assuming its a good Ethernet cable.
This is all assuming its currently a phone extension that is.

Paul