Master phone socket confusion

pablo1827

Hi my main phone line coming into the house terminates in an old PO socket covered by a blank plate.When opened I am faced with 4core wire (red,blak,blue and white).Two of these wires are connected to a block and two snipped.There has been an extension from the block to a new style socket about a foot away.From this socket there are extensions running all over house.I have been experiencing slow broadband speeds and I have been told to plug the router directly into the master socket so as to rule out the extension wiring causing the problem.With not having a new style bt master I don't have any way to check this.Would bt fix a new master in or would I have to contact sky who are my phone provider.Sorry for rambling on but I have tried to explain the best I can.

macman

BT will happily fit one for you if you don't mind paying them £130-this will be done by BT OR, and you'll neeed to book it via your line rental provider.
A more MSE approach is simply to get an independent telecoms engineer to wire in an NTE5 for you anywhere downstream of the old PO lozenge socket. BT's jurisdiction ends at that, so it can be as close as you like to it.
That should cost you more like £40-50.
Replacing or working on the old BT socket is not allowed.

pablo1827

Thanks for the info madman.Would it be alright if I fitted a new NTE5 box myself and done away with the old PO lozenge.It looks pretty simple(2 wires) and available on eBay for about a fiver.

macman

No. As I already said, the lozenge is the property of BT and cannot legally be touched by anyone else.

pablo1827

Ok hear what your saying.I will wire the box downstream from the gpo lozenge .Thanks for your help.

pablo1827

Quick update.Phoned my isp provider(skytalk)and they sent round engineer the following day from openreach who fitted a dedicated phone and broadband socket free of charge.Happy days now getting 3.5mb the most i can get from my exchange and miles better than the speed i was getting.

macman

Are you absolutely sure that the OR engineer confirmed there was no charge, and do you have evidence in writing of that?
Because there are numerous accounts of such jobs being logged as chargeable, regardless of what was said to the occupier at the time. If the old socket was working then OR would not normally replace this without charging.

pablo1827

Definately free of charge.The old socket just had GPO plate cover then an extension from there to a socket 1ft away.He was on the phone to sky as he changed it explaining that this was causing the slow speed and also that it was a 70s built house.