Missing Master Socket

I have a relative who has both a noisy (crackly) telephone and an unreliable broadband connection. I suspect a poor landline but to avoid unneccessary callout charges, went to check her own wiring first.

House is in West London and was built mid 1980s.

There is no master socket!

I suspect the BT wiring might have been butchered by the previous house owner. The wire comes from the ground outside, straight into a grey fan-shaped box hung loosely on the outside wall. From here a wire runs rather casually through the front door frame to a small, white, rectangular junction box (no 'phone socket) from where a wire then continues, round a door frame, to a conventional white 'phone socket - presumably not a master socket, since there is no separately detachable section to the face plate.

Into this socket she simply has a filter plugged in, with the voice outlet going directly to a nearby 'phone and the BB outlet going directly to her modem/router, which links to her (upstairs) laptop wirelessly.

Since there appear to be faults on both the voice and the broadband, and since there is very little of "her own" wiring in the house, I suspect the external landline.

However, if she contacts BT / Openreach (presumably through her ISP, Cooptel), what charge will she face? If there is no master socket, where does BTs responsibility begin and end? If a previous owner of the house has actually butchered things and removed the master socket, where will she stand with BT?

She is not technical, so I offered to check things out for her here before she incurrs the possible cost and hassle of a callout.

Did all domestic installations of that period have a modern, standard master socket? Help, please!

There is a master socket. It just isn't a modern one with a test socket. My master socket is stamped GPO.

Disconnect all the broadband kit and do a BT quiet line test (17070 option 2 I think). If there is noise report it to BT as a voice line fault. Fixing that fault will likely solve the broadband problems as well.

No apostrophes were harmed in the making of this post.

Thanks for this clear and helpful reply (and your concern for the welfare of apostrophes is appreciated).

Presumably the quiet line test should produce absolute, complete silence (it did on my own 'phone when I tried it) and (provided you are plugged directly into the master socket), any noise whatever would indicate a faulty line to the house, so you should be able to demand an investigation and fix with no risk of facing a callout charge?

My relative has a bundled deal with CoopTel, so has to complain via them. She is hacked off with their non-24-hour help desk availablity.

I don't see CoopTel in the TBB list of ISPs, so whose service are they re-selling please? I will probably end up advising her to transfer to PlusNet who have been good, reliable providers to me, with an excellent 24/7 local-call-rate help desk ...

As per your phone there should be no noise when you do the quiet line test with your ADSL kit disconnected. If this was a BT line there is no charge to correct voice line faults. I don't know the position when you pay line rental to cooptel.

http://www.cooptel.net/residential/landlines doesn't give any obvious (to me) guidance.

I don't know who they resell.

In reply to a post by Titus:

Presumably the quiet line test should produce absolute, complete silence (it did on my own 'phone when I tried it) and (provided you are plugged directly into the master socket), any noise whatever would indicate a faulty line to the house, so you should be able to demand an investigation and fix with no risk of facing a callout charge?

I find that if you do hear anything during quietline, as long as it isn't intermittent, BT themselves will pick that fault up as soon as you call 151.

The small white box with a socket could be a master. Even up until 2001 BT were installing the 65mm square socket with a plug in master module which replaced the similar sized boxes which could be a master or secondary dependent on the components installed.

If you were to unscrew that cover and look inside you would soon know what was there.

As for West London - why did you not tell us you were visiting and we would have decorated the streets with superfluous apostrophes.

Ahem... superfluous apostrophe's!

Thank's, but I can manage without decorated street's, thank you!

While I'm posting: she has a package deal from the Phone Co-op (she refers to it as "CoopTel"). I presume they are re-sellers, and I have been told that it is probably Tiscali which they re-sell. Can anyone confirm this, please? How can you find out who a resellers is re-selling?

Are Tiscali still as trerrible as they always used to be? If so, that might explain the poor support and BB non-availablity she has been suffering.

I'm tempted to tell her to join me and transfer to PlusNet.

In reply to a post by john2007:

... Disconnect all the broadband kit and do a BT quiet line test (17070 option 2 I think). If there is noise report it to BT as a voice line fault. Fixing that fault will likely solve the broadband problems as well ...

Just spoken to her (on a noisy, crackly landline!) and she had already done the test, on my advice - and it was indeed noisy.

She then contacted CoopTel who said the line was OK. She was able to tell them that she knew it wasn't 'cos she's just tested it, so they then said "Ah! In that case, we'll arrange an engineer to fix it [in other words, presumably they would contact the ISP who would contact Openreach etc.] - if it's a line fault, they won't normally need to visit your house."

She will wait and give them a chance to sort it. If nothing improves, I suggested she contact BT on 151, not mention broadband or CoopTel at all, and just say "Please can you help me? My telephone line is all crackly."

Thanks for your help and guidance, folks. I'll let you know the outcome.

Update - just received this E-mail from my relative:

"Openreach man came this morning. Problem was with box on outside wall which had old wire terminals which had corroded. He has 'crimped' these & says they'll last next 20 yrs..."

Yay! I hope this will fix her BB problems as well.

Thank you very much for prompt and helpful advice here - if she had not been able to carry out the recommended "silent line" check, she would never have had the confidence to kick some sense into CoopTel and demand a proper check on her line.

Thinkbroadband.com rules!

Edited by deleted (Fri 28-Aug-09 17:34:21)

That should be Th'nkbroadband.com rules!

In reply to a post by john2007:

That should be Th'nkbroadband.com rules!

Durr! Thank you. Typo' now corrected.