Fixing internal phone wiring

I�ve just moved into a 1970s house with some unique phone wiring� The external phone cable appears in a cupboard where the meters are. There�s no master socket; instead it is crimped onto another section of wire, with the crimps hidden inside a small BT-branded plastic box, dangling loose on the floor. This second cable is heavily worn, with the outer insulation missing from several stretches. It leads to another identical plastic box by the stairs, where it�s crimped onto a new cable and heads to an old-style master phone socket. Inside this socket, the socket itself has been bypassed, with the cables crimped again onto another wire, heading upstairs. It runs through the plaster to a wall socket (not a master) on a wall I�m planning to knock down. Into this socket, a consumer phone extension lead is plugged. This makes its way through a wall and under the carpet, finally at the end of it is an official MK1 Openreach master socket.

Unbelievably I get a stable 75Mbps connection over this, and I�d leave it alone if it wasn�t for the fact that I need to knock down the wall with the non-master phone socket. Given the lack of a proper master socket, where does my responsibility start for this mess? My phone line and internet are with Sky if that matters.

There�s an unused TV coax which runs from the cupboard where the cable first arrives, up to the location where I�d like the master socket to finally be. I�m inclined to pull this out, and use its holes to run a single new phone cable. What would Sky/Openreach charge me to do this? Alternatively, am I permitted to do this myself?

The official point is probably the MK1 master socket back box

If you want an Openreach person to turn up and do the work it will be chargeable.

You don't want to move the master socket to some random room in your house. You would be better off moving the master socket to the cupboard and then running some Cat5e or better yet Cat6 and sticking a VDSL modem in the cupboard with a router where every you want it. You will probably get a full 80/20 if you do that by the sounds of it. Basically you want to turn your lossy xDSL signal into ethernet at the first possible opportunity which can then run for 100m without any further bandwith loss.

Personally I would buy myself a genuine NTE5 (preferably not a 5c one make it look like it was done a while ago) and corresponding faceplate filter on eBay and install that in the cupboard, rip the rest out and if an engineer ever questions it in the future play dumb and blame it on the previous occupants.

Depends on how competent you are in doing the work really, but technically only Openreach should do the work. However it should be pretty easy to work out what is A and B and punch it down correctly on the new master after cutting the crimps out.

Thanks for the great suggestion jabuzzard! I simply took the existing MK1 Openreach socket and reinstalled it in the cupboard - a ten minute job. Router is now synced at 79Mbps (so close!) but more importantly I can pull out the old rats nest of wiring and knock down my dividing wall. I'll run some cat 5 later, for now an old set of powerline adaptors I had lying around serve the purpose.

I am not sure I have ever seen anything sync at exactly 80Mbps despite being on top of the VDSL cabinet. Always seems to say 79Mbps for me in that scenario and I figure it's down to some overhead somewhere. I guess you could try a short good quality RJ11 cable to see it it is possible to get 80Mbps

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

I am not sure I have ever seen anything sync at exactly 80Mbps despite being on top of the VDSL cabinet. Always seems to say 79Mbps for me in that scenario and I figure it's down to some overhead somewhere.

Mine's exacter now than on its previous sync;

. 		  DS Channel1	  DS Channel0	US Channel1	  US Channel0
Speed (kbps):	          0	       80000	         0	       18286
SRA Previous Speed:       0	       79999	         0	       17676

In reply to a post by cjt105:

I simply took the existing MK1 Openreach socket and reinstalled it in the cupboard - a ten minute job. Router is now synced at 79Mbps (so close!)

The last version of the NTE5A and the NTE5C will probably give 1-2Mbps extra sync (maybe more) as the surge protector fitted to older master sockets adversely affects VDSL performance.

If I had replaced several older NTE5A sockets with newer ones I might have seen this effect every time

Edit: Just checked and the one which might have been replaced recently showed a 5Mbps improvement in sync.

Edited by caffn8me (Tue 29-Jan-19 11:08:32)

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

I am not sure I have ever seen anything sync at exactly 80Mbps despite being on top of the VDSL cabinet. Always seems to say 79Mbps for me in that scenario and I figure it's down to some overhead somewhere. I guess you could try a short good quality RJ11 cable to see it it is possible to get 80Mbps

My last three homes have had full 80/20 sync, and none have been right on top of the cab .......

... I have seen it countless times at work too .. maybe it�s what you are testing with ??

Have you always had SRA Previous Speed showing a figure?
I've only seen that show 0 before.
That was on about a dozen Cisco routers.

Made me wonder if your on the SRA trial. I'm yet to see a line with it enabled.

Edited by j0hn83 (Wed 30-Jan-19 00:25:23)

Yes, it's always shown it ever since I had the connection installed - and that was in 2014. The router is a Cisco 887VA

Whether it's actually using SRA or not is another matter. BT SIN 498 mandates SRA support but I can't tell whether the DSLAM is enabled for it. I suspect it just shows the last sync rate and not SRA.

There is a current SRA trial but I think it's nothing to do with that; Openreach to conduct large-scale SRA trial on FTTC broadband lines