What is this ugly (unconnected) wire coming out of my Openreach Box

FrankFalcon

Hi all

We moved into a house last year that has a huge, ugly openreach box on the living room wall.  The grey wire coming out of it goes to the back of the sky router and plugs into the broadband socket on the back of the router.  However, there is this ugly White wire that sticks out of the bottom of the box and literally goes nowhere.  Someone has simply chopped it off 1 metre away.  ISo, I have 2 questions please...

1. What is this Ugly, old White wire that goes nowhere?
2. Is there any way I can improve the size/look of this openreach box? It is so ugly and huge and is in the middle of a wall.  It is bigger than my fist.  Is there a slimline option or any other device that will allow me to remove this ugly, Openreach box?

Thank you

IMAGES ATTACHED.

FrankFalcon

Sorry guys, my arm clicked the mouse and uploaded question before I could finish...These 2 images show the wire coming out of the bottom of the box and the other end where it is roughly cut off.

neilmcl

It was for an extension socket.

flaneurs_lobster

Is the box on an external wall? What happens on the other side?

Personally I'd stick a bookcase in front of the thing and forget about it.

flashg67

unscrew the lower section and remove the extra wires - looks like it was for an extension. Or just cut them close the box etc. As for moving it, tricky as this looks like where the main phone line enters

Jenni_D

As above, remove the lower section of the faceplate and see where those wires go. A properly-wired extension should have those wires landing on terminals 2 and 5 (and a 3rd wire may also be terminated, possibly on terminal 3). If this is true then you can simply pull those wires out of the terminals and remove the cable altogether.  

GDB2222

“2. Is there any way I can improve the size/look of this openreach box? It is so ugly and huge and is in the middle of a wall.  It is bigger than my fist.  Is there a slimline option or any other device that will allow me to remove this ugly, Openreach box?“


It's the box terminating your phone line. BT will probably move it, if you pay for the work to be done. £150 ish IIRC. 

Describing it as huge does make one wonder …

[Deleted User]

Easy to move the box.  I did this recently myself and it cost me nothing.

Drill a hole through the wall in a new suitable location, ensuring that's somewhere that the external cable will reach.  Disconnect the box from the wall and refit in the new location, reinstalling the external cable into the box.  This is very easy.  There's probably 2 small wires to refit.  Take a couple of pics first to ensure you relocate them properly.

It took me about 25 mins all in, including filling the original hole in the wall.  It helped I was decorating that room so was wallpapering that wall anyway.

neilmcl

desktop said:

Easy to move the box.  I did this recently myself and it cost me nothing.

Drill a hole through the wall in a new suitable location, ensuring that's somewhere that the external cable will reach.  Disconnect the box from the wall and refit in the new location, reinstalling the external cable into the box.  This is very easy.  There's probably 2 small wires to refit.  Take a couple of pics first to ensure you relocate them properly.

It took me about 25 mins all in, including filling the original hole in the wall.  It helped I was decorating that room so was wallpapering that wall anyway.

What you can do yourself and what is legally allowed are two different things. Everything up to the faceplate is the property of Openreach and you strictly shouldn't be touching it.

GDB2222

If you do it yourself, you’ll need a punch down tool.

One drawback is if there’s a problem with the line at some point, it may be obvious that the line has been moved by an amateur. I’m not sure what the consequences are?

[Deleted User]

I bought a punch down tool but didn't need it.  A small screwdriver did the job fine.  The tool cost around £3 from eBay so it wasn't a massive loss.

A TalkTalk engineer replaced my line prior.  The original BT point was in the hall and I asked him to move it into the lounge.  He rerouted the line from the BT external grey box around the external walls to this location.  I would have thought that this was a common task carried out for consumers.  As such, I would have thought that BT would have no clue who did what and when and probably wouldn't care less.