How to get my phoneline mastersocket moved?

Mad Badger

Mad Badger

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I've been having grief with my broadband, the phone line signal quality is pants, prob due to the age of the house, Talk Talk are reluctant to send BT Openreach round, I want them to as I'm sure a new mastersocket is the answer. Is there a way I can get hold of Openreach myself, or are there independent contractors who are allowed to meddle with such things?
 
Buy and fit a new master socket yourself - easy, get one from ebay or your local electrical 'bits' supplier - Openreach won't deal with you.
 
you can also ask them to turn up the "gain" on your line hth mike
 
Yeah I am happy about replacing it, but ideally I want it moved into another room, it's not far from where the phoneline enters the house at the moment, but I think I could get into all kinds of sh*t from BT if I try to shift it myself.
 
Send for the BT man, mind you it's £130 if he finds you damaged it!
 
I'm happy I haven't damaged it, it's in a 150 year old house with an ancient grey box on the external wall where the line comes in - just want someone to relocate it!
 
Mad Badger said:
I'm happy I haven't damaged it, it's in a 150 year old house with an ancient grey box on the external wall where the line comes in - just want someone to relocate it!
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Get the BT fella then, probably be free.
 
Mad Badger said:
Yeah I am happy about replacing it, but ideally I want it moved into another room, it's not far from where the phoneline enters the house at the moment, but I think I could get into all kinds of sh*t from BT if I try to shift it myself.
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Technically everything up to the master socket is BT property and you can land in hot water if you meddle with it.

That said if you can move it without looking like its been moved you could probably get away with it if they ever do come out as they don't seem to hold records.
 
Incidentally moving the master socket isn't likely to improve your broadband unless you're sure the cabling to the socket is damaged (even if it is like I say this is BT equipment/responsibility). First off try connecting direct to the test socket under the faceplate, see if things are any better.

Insist that an engineer is sent, BT normally do scaremongering that if no fault is found you'll be charged but in 8 years dealing with (home and business) them I've never had them do this as the fault is always line or exchange.

Personally I'd say if you have a noisey line it's probably an issue in your green box on the pavement or at the exchange. 95% its that in my experience.
 
If he has such a test socket in his old house ?
 
A friend of mine had the same problem. Poor line quality and bad broadband speed. On a BT line. Tried for ages to get BT to respond. India call centre kept saying the line was fine. Finally lost his rag and demanded the supervisor. They finally arranged for a member of the "Underground" team ( their phrase) to come out. Turned out it was a line problem between the cabinet and the house. Installed new connection and now all is fine. India apparently can only check that there is a connection not the quality of the connection, as he was told by the engineer.

The only thing I can suggest is ring BT state there is a line fault and you need an engineer visit. The only problem I can see is TalkTalk being the middle man. If you want the socket moved BT will charge for this
 
I've done the test socket malarky, no improvement in the router continually losing sync. Talk Talk had one of their engineers out to the house - he could see a rat's maze of DIY phone extension cables put in by the previous home owner and reckons it's this that's responsible for the crap broadband. He;s not allowed to touch it, it's down to BT.
BTW I've connected a different router from the Talk Talk DSL one & I've got an 8Mb connection, which has frequent errors in the router log, but at least i'm on line! (Prev getting 12.5Mb).
Will try t o find how I ring BT - Openreach will not talk to me, has to via the broadband supplier I think.
 
Open reach = BT

Unless you have a BT supplied line you'll need to go through talk talk. Good luck, their CS is utter balls.

BT won't touch internal extensions either by the way, that's not their job. Only up to the master socket is their responsibility.
 
The DIY fiasco is at an old bell ringer before the cable reaches the mastersocket, so hopefully the BT engineer will be able to unravel it, will get onto talk talk againonMonday, yeah TT are balls,keep going round in circles with them & getting cut off repeatedly, any recommendations for a top class broadband supplier? Price not important, thinking of plusnet?
 
I have moved my master socket before without too much trouble, as has been said above they (bt) don't keep records. I have had OpenReach out since to put in my fibre, not a word said...
 
As Neil said, the line up to the master socket is part of the network and belongs to BT and the subscriber is not allowed to tamper with it (pretty sure it's actually a criminal offence to tamper with the network, even if it's on your property).

While they don't keep records, the Openreach people usually can spot when the subscriber has been doing DIY. Whether or not they say anything depends on the individual and the degree of bodging they need to remedy, according to the BT person that moved my master socket earlier this year - when he saw all the network wiring in my "server cupboard" he said I would have been fine doing it myself had I wanted to.
 
Ozei said:
This was on Watchdog the other day. You can't phone Openreach direct, the request has to come from TalkTalk (whose customer service is a joke).
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Of course, because the customer does not buy a service from Openreach so has no contract with them. They buy it from talktalk. So if the talktalk service fails they need to talk to talktalk, who should in turn talk to their suppliers as needed.

The fact that talktalk customer service is rubbish is nothing to do with Openreach.
 
Mad Badger said:
The DIY fiasco is at an old bell ringer before the cable reaches the mastersocket, so hopefully the BT engineer will be able to unravel it, will get onto talk talk againonMonday, yeah TT are balls,keep going round in circles with them & getting cut off repeatedly, any recommendations for a top class broadband supplier? Price not important, thinking of plusnet?
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virgin 60mb broad band never skipped a beat since installation 5 years ago
 
dinorock said:
virgin 60mb broad band never skipped a beat since installation 5 years ago
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Considered Virgin when we moved earlier this year, first time in over 20 years I have lived in a house with cable. To be honest the mass of negative reviews on the reliability put me off, I appreciate there are variations on service but there seems to be an awful lot of unhappy Virgin customers out there.

Steve
 
jakeblu said:
Considered Virgin when we moved earlier this year, first time in over 20 years I have lived in a house with cable. To be honest the mass of negative reviews on the reliability put me off, I appreciate there are variations on service but there seems to be an awful lot of unhappy Virgin customers out there.

Steve
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yup, laggy and not hugely reliable. their business fiber isnt much better..
 
i started with the xl 30mb package, when they started to get more customers had a free "yes free" upgrade to 60mb if there was an i love virgin smiley i would fly the flag hth mike. could be your location i know of people still using 500 kb :lol:
 
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Mad Badger said:
any recommendations for a top class broadband supplier? Price not important, thinking of plusnet?
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I'm with Clara Net. Not cheap, but every time I've had a problem, they've sorted it with a small team of decent support staff (you often get to speak to the same person if you have an ongoing problem). It is definitely a cut above call-centre support.
 
Thanks for the recommendations guys, am waiting for talk talk to request that BT come round to sort out my wiring........:tumbleweed:
 
onomatopoeia said:
Of course, because the customer does not buy a service from Openreach so has no contract with them.
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The master socket was fitted by BT long before TalkTalk or any of the others even existed. There's a master socket in my house - if it goes wrong I should be able to talk to the people who own it and maintain it.

onomatopoeia said:
The fact that talktalk customer service is rubbish is nothing to do with Openreach.
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I didn't say it was. :shrug:
 
Ozei said:
The master socket was fitted by BT long before TalkTalk or any of the others even existed. There's a master socket in my house - if it goes wrong I should be able to talk to the people who own it and maintain it.
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unfortunately as its wholesale BT/Openreach wont entertain that request
 
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