Hi

I wonder if anyone can give me some advice on the best way to go- sorry in advance for long convoluted post.

I have 2 phone lines coming into my house put in by previous owners.

The line that is connected is the oldest (prob 25+ years)- it has the old LJ2/1A master socket and has 2 joins in the old cable upsteam of this after it comes through various walls- one join is even via a 'chocolate block' terminal block which must have been done years ago before an extension was built on the house- to be honest I didn't realise it was my phone cable and thought it was to do with the door bell !!

Anyway this master socket is inconveniently positioned in the hall and when I have the micro filter and extensions connected it's a bit bulky and these keep getting hit with the hoover.

The second phone line one is "slightly" newer and has what I think are two NTE5 master sockets and comes in to my office. One socket is labelled as being for a fax but when I've looked inside both sockets are connected to the same cable

I'm in the process of decorating and would like to do away with some of the horrible old cable linked to the current master socket and move the socket. Ideally I would like to swap the lines and activate the one that comes in to the office, and maybe do away with the plug in microfilter and have one of those dual ASDL faceplates. I realise I would probably need to put in some more extensions from this master socket to cover the rest of the house.

How would I go about doing this?
Presumably I need to contact BT but would I end up paying to disconnect and reconnect or what ? And could I keep the same no. or would they go with the one originally allocated to the other line?
Any advice.
I pay BT line rental and broadband but calls are through primus

Thanks

It all depends on where the two lines end up. The simplest solution for BT would be a two (or more) pair cable from the telegraph pole or underground to your house. This connects to a junction box with separate wires going off to the two master sockets.

The other way would be two separate wires from telegraph pole or underground to your house, one for each master socket.

Either way the two lines will more than likely come together at a junction box somewhere. It would be extremely unlikely that they connect to separate multipair cables back to two different exchanges or anything silly like that.

In which case it is a relatively simple matter for Openreach to swap the two feeds round. At the very least they should be able to swap the feeds at the exchange. If they can locate the inactive line that is. But I rather suspect that would not be free however they do it.

I have a feeling you will need to contact BT and talk to them. And just hope you get someone who understands what you are talking about.

Oh and just to clear up any confusion this is what an NTE5 looks like...

http://www.rob-r.co.uk/other/UKphone...s/image012.jpg

buy all the socket/fascias from B&Q, trace your interior lines back to where they physically enter the house, then run your own cabling (again can be bought in B&Q) down to wherever you want your new master socket to go. You won't be touching the "drop cable" off the pole on the exterior of the property, only modifying interior wiring. BT advised me that I was allowed to do this when I recently relocated my master socket when we swapped the lounge and bedroom in our bungalow. Cost me less than £25 and under two hours work from start to finish (including tea break ).

there are plenty of sites explaining how to wire up an ADSL dual socket, so it's really simple to do. I'd only ever pay BT (Openreach actually) for a connection if there was no line going to the property in the first place, or if the existing wiring was faulty/FUBARed.

Hi

Thanks for the replies.
Looks like a single cable comes from underground to a box at the side of my house- just looked in there and the two cables come out of there and go into the house at different locations.
Could a get one of these 'former' BT engineers I've seen advertise locally- to change these over?
However ideally I'd probably like to take the old line out altogether as it doesn't actually come into the house to a normal BT junction box just his 'chocalate block' I mentioned above
Thanks

Technically it all depends on whether the junction box is the demarcation point for the BT line. If the wires out to the sockets are on the customer side then you can indeed swap them over yourself. If they are still considered part of the BT plant then technically you can't touch them.

Mind you that never stopped some people

I never said this but.....

If you employ a telecoms engineer to run in new cabling for new extensions you could point him at this junction box and plant the idea that you would like the lines swapped over, nudge nudge and all that

Up to you obviously. But from what you've described looks like someone has already had a go at bodging the old line anyway so I doubt it can get any worse.

Thanks chrisjr

The more I look at it the more I wonder how I do still have a functioning phone and pretty good broadband connection!!

I have just looked at the chocalate block connector which just seems to connect the blue and orange wires in the cable to another similar cable that goes through the wall and wondered if I could connect this to another cable and take it back outside to come back in at the junction box in the office? I guess I shouldn't be doing that but as you say it's already been messed with once (or even twice)
In that case what kind of cable would I need to go externally back outside?
Thanks

I would not use the choc-block connector at all. And I would not advise jointing cables if it can be avoided. The best solution is to move the "new" cable onto the "old" cable terminations in the BT junction box. After all the cables already go back to there.

The more joins in a cable the more points of failure and the greater the potential for the ADSL to get messed up.

Hi there, if you are BT customer BT can do this work for you. Charges will be raised for shifting your master socket and for each additional extension that you would like fitted. If you would like this work to be completed by one of our engineers, please let me know and this can be arranged.

Thanks BT support- I realise that but what would the charge be to just swap over my 2 phone lines at the junction box outside my house (as described by chris jr) and not to do anything with my master sockets?