Hi all,

I'm staying with my aunt who has just had broadbandaactivated, but while sorting out the cables, the line started playing up and going dead. I deduced it was something loose inside the socket, and indeed one of the two metal bits (where you screw the wires onto) on the rear plate was no longer fixed and coming away from the plate.

We've iust been out, but nowhere had the same socket as a replacement- all I could find was front plates. What I did find was a socket with a microfilter inside and separate phone/ADSL ports on front, which is ideal. This however has six screws on the back to connect wires.

1. Not used.
2. Blue with white banding.
3. Orange with white banding.
4. White with orange banding.
5. White with blue banding.
6. Not used.

Yet there's only two wires coming through the wall- white and orange. Can all this stuff work together?

If you are determined to fit it yourself.

Connect the Orange and White wires to number 1 and number 5. Be careful though as there is voltage running through the telephone wire.

Thanks Killie, I actually managed to get it done already although I used 2 and 5, as 1 is not used! Phone and broadband are working perfectly now

Yeah I meant 2 and 5 the blue / white pair.

And just hope that you never have to call out Openreach to fix a line fault.

If you have interfered with the incoming line in any way they are very likely to use that as an excuse to charge you even if the fault is not connected to the wiring you have done. Also what type of socket is it? If it is not approved for connection to the BT network that may also be used as an excuse to charge you.

If you had asked the company you pay line rental to I would not be surprised if they sent out an engineer to replace the socket with a proper BT NTE5 style one for free.

I just bought a genuine one from eBay with the Openreach markings on and everything, and fitted it myself, dead easy plenty of guides on the web, saves paying BT over £200 for do it, if you attach the cables in the correct way they will never know you have done it

Get a genuine BT from ebay with the BT logo on the front. There are 2 incoming wires it does not matter which hole they go in don't let them touch
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_t...All-Categories

Unless of course you need to call Openreach in the future because there is right way and a wrong way to connect the incoming pair and an Openreach engineer will quickly spot an incorrect connection.

BTW. If you have a problem with a Master Socket, Openreach will fix it for free and so the OP has wasted some money on top of poking around where he.she shouldn't have..

Why did BT have to use so many wires in the UK ?.
Here in Rhodes we only have 2 wires. If your house needs a phone socket an electrician installs this not the phone company.
The phone company then make the connection.

We also only have two wires. That is all any POTS circuit requires.

Having said that when BT moved to the 'New Plan' telephone sockets in the 1980s it was felt necessary to allow subscribers to carry on using old style phones. In order to do that a third wire was introduced but ONLY in extension wiring. The third wire was supported by using BT three pair cabling. The unused three wires being 'spares'.

Electricians also install sockets in the UK on new build and BT connect them.