Fibre - master socket positioning

I've had FTTC with Zen for a while now and an very happy with it. My father has ADSL with Zen and is looking at having FTTC too.

One issue may be the positioning of the master socket - it's in the hallway of his house, with no power socket near it. The cable simply seems to come in from under the house, as there's no obvious cable coming from the junction box at the end of the drive.

There is an extension wired to the master, which goes upstairs and provides ADSL.

When BT installed FTTC at my house, they used my existing extension and mounted the socket in my office, at the end of this extension - that socket is now purely for data, but that's fine.

Any ideas as to what BT are likely to do in my father's situation?

Hi

BT wouldn't move the existing socket, they will however fit an additional 30m of data extension kit as part of the install.

They won't however drill through anything or bury the cable. They will simple tack it to the skirting boards or around a door frame.

I hope that helps

That's pretty much what I expected, Mick - I know that they tend to take the 'path of least resistance', so to speak.

I just wondered, as the existing extension is nice and neat, under the carpets and hidden - I think the last thing my father will want is wiring stapled to the stairs / door frames / skirting boards.

Hi

The official BT line is that they won't use existing wiring that is beyond the NTE5 socket and will fit the extension kit.

Having said that the engineer may deem the current extension socket is suitable and use it.

This would be down to the engineer on the day.

I hope that helps.

Thanks
Mick

In reply to a post by mickbzen:

Having said that the engineer may deem the current extension socket is suitable and use it.

What are you suggesting? The engineer could fit an interstitial plate on the existing NTE5 and use one pair for filtered voice and the other pair for vdsl using the existing extension cable, depending on it's suitability, to a dual unfiltered phone and rj11 socket?

Edited by 4M2 (Mon 14-Oct-13 16:32:50)

In reply to a post by 4M2:

What are you suggesting? The engineer could fit an interstitial plate on the existing NTE5 and use one pair for filtered voice and the other pair for vdsl using the existing extension cable, depending on it's suitability, to a dual unfiltered phone and rj11 socket?

If the current master socket is "unused", (which we don't know), what's the problem?

In reply to a post by Stevenage_Neil:

If the current master socket is "unused", (which we don't know), what's the problem?

Sorry, what do you mean? Possibly the current master NTE5 is "unused" in the sense that there is only the one extension connected to it and a phone would not be required for use there?

If the extension socket was fitted with a filtered faceplate for both phone and vdsl use then that would certainly render the NTE5 with a unfiltered standard bottom plate usable only with a dangle filter which would probably not be satisfactory. If there are other extensions connected to that original NTE5 bottom plate then they would also be unfiltered and require dangle filters.

In reply to a post by 4M2:

Sorry, what do you mean? Possibly the current master NTE5 is "unused" in the sense that there is only the one extension connected to it and a phone would not be required for use there?

Yes. We also do not know if it is a NTE5.

In reply to a post by Stevenage_Neil:

In reply to a post by 4M2:

Sorry, what do you mean? Possibly the current master NTE5 is "unused" in the sense that there is only the one extension connected to it and a phone would not be required for use there?

Yes. We also do not know if it is a NTE5.

Very true, but the OP did say: "One issue may be the positioning of the master socket - it's in the hallway of his house, with no power socket near it. The cable simply seems to come in from under the house, as there's no obvious cable coming from the junction box at the end of the drive.

There is an extension wired to the master, which goes upstairs and provides ADSL."

Perhaps one can assume that the "master" is an NTE5 since there is an extension wired to it, although of course the OP hasn't mentioned that it includes a test socket and could just be a phone socket linked to an NTE5 elsewhere

In reply to a post by 4M2:

....although of course the OP hasn't mentioned that it includes a test socket and could just be a phone socket linked to an other non NTE5 socket elsewhere

My thoughts entirely!