Hello all,

My daughter is having BT Infinity installed early next year and has a few concerns that BT haven't really answered.

It's a 70s build house and her house only has one phone socket (the master) which is tucked away in the understairs cupboard with no power source near it at all unless she uses an extension cable.

Her office upstairs has a phone extension cable running from the master socket under the carpet (wrong I know) up to the office where it connects with her modem and a wired PC.

At the moment her master socket runs off with cables to a corded phone in her kitchen, a cordless in the living room, a Sky Box in the living room and the modem and a Sky multiroom box upstairs.

Would she be better getting a new master socket installed upstairs and any idea on cost? Or is it better to get a new plug installed (her best friend is an electrician but it would be a - when he's got time job) next to the master socket?

Don't know if it's still the case. But when I had Infinity installed Openreach were quite happy to run a data extension where I asked them. Effectively allowing me to put the modem and router somewhere far more convenient. 30 Meters was the max they could run in those days.

You have two options

The first one would be for BT Openreach to install a master socket in the office

The second option would be to run a 30 metre data cable from the Master socket to the office by BT Openreach

Bear in mind there is no need to have a power socket by the master telephone socket. You do need power by wherever you want the Homehub positioned which the installer will put where you want (within reason) and take care of running the data cable back to the master socket.

The data cable idea may be best for her then.

It's the up to 80 installation she's getting which looking at the BT site takes less work/time.

I imagine BT Openreach installing a socket wouldn't be cheap

Openreach won't "install" a master socket, they just convert the extension socket already there into a master by altering the wiring inside.

The likely solution is data extension as people have said which is basically a very long DSL lead to the router. Just move EVERYTHING out the way of the route you want the cable to take to get upstairs to the router before the guy turns up.

and tim that's not right, they shouldn't be doing that unless they are shifting the master socket. From what the OP has said they have a manual plug in telephone extension kit and not a hard wired extension.

The Data Extension kit which consists of a wall socket installed up to 30M away is fitted for free. They will change the faceplate of your master socket to a thicker one and spur off it with the extension.

Great, so will she still be able to run connections off to the Sky boxes?

From the hub/router yes.

Great, BT told her that a new faceplate would mean she couldn't do that as you can't run a standard cable off it.

Sorry I thought you meant Ethernet connections from the router.

The standard phone line socket on the new Master faceplate will still be usable as before. So telephony devices using the phone line will still be OK. Also you won't need any micro filters anymore as it is built in to the new faceplate.

Great, the ethernet cable that runs to her office I assume will be replaced by this new data cable

You've all been far more helpful BT