Multiple phone lines in House

amandamilner

We live in a 10 year old townhouse, which has 4-5 phone ports throughout. I'm an architect and know that when this house was built, all the ports would be connected- ie only one line is served by all ports, so if someone downstairs was on the phone someone upstairs could pick it up and hear the convo.
For whatever reason only one works, and we have asked our telephone provider XLN to get another to work. They insist it means installing a new line at a cost of £109 +VAT and this new line would have a different number. Surely this is not right, why cant we just get one line and all ports working?

spike7451

What you want it to get the other extensions to work,if they all worked at on time,it suggests that the is a damaged internal wire somewhere after the main socket.Your best bet would be to call around some electrical contractors for quotes to reconnect/repair the extensions as your phone provider might only be liable for the line up to the master socket & not the extensions,as in the case of BT lines.

brewerdave

To back up what spike has said, my daughter was in a similar situation in a 4 year old new build, the two upstairs sockets were dead whilst the lounge socket was live. We called in a local eleccie who diagnosed and solved the problem in literally two minutes,a broken wire behind the lounge socket - he also sorted out a problem with her bathroom lights - total cost £40!

Heinz

The key to such problems is being able to prove continuity between parts of the system and, where physical breaks are not obvious from inspection, a tone sender (a standard item in an electrician's kit) is normally the easiest way to do that.

iniltous

You need your extension wiring and sockets reconnecting, your Telco has either mis-understood what you want or are trying to sell you something you dont need...your Telco should be able to arrange doing this, but as other have said it would be a lot cheaper to get a local tradesman to do it...it may also be worth making sure your extensions are wired correctly from the master socket (from the consumer panel if you have a NTE5 type master socket) because any problem on extension wiring or sockets is not BT/OR's responsibility and a reported fault that was caused by this, if your Telco called BT/OR out, would be charged, OR would charge your Telco who would (no doubt) charge you

spike7451

Heinz wrote: »

The key to such problems is being able to prove continuity between parts of the system and, where physical breaks are not obvious from inspection, a tone sender (a standard item in an electrician's kit) is normally the easiest way to do that.

One of the most useful bit's of kit I have! Saves loads of time tracing a fault or a line back on all sorts of set up!:money: