Hi all, Need some advice... The house I live in was built in the 70's, before the time of the NTE5 master socket.

Where the phone line enters the house, is a hole in the wall, in the hall. The hole in the wall is then covered by a blank faceplate marked "GPO", behind the faceplate is an old style GPO box (in an oval shape, then from that, there is a cable that runs about 10 metres down the hall, to an old style LJU BT master socket, (the one without the removable faceplate or test socket) the wiring itself looks past its sell by date, same goes for the GPO box.

Im on BT broadband ADSL, and my line is pretty long (2.6Km in a straight line), attenuation is 52dB.

I'd like to squeeze as much out of the line as possible regards ADSL speed, (ive already removed the 3rd ring wire, but didnt really notice any improvement in line stats) plus the fact id like to move my master socket anyway, so what i was thinking was....

Could I possibly remove the old cabling, the old master socket, and the old style GPO box, and wire up an NTE5 master socket directly to the drop line, locating it in place of the blank faceplate, there is enough slack on the drop line to allow me to do so, then i'd like to fit a filtered faceplate to the NTE5.

I know you are not strictly allowed to replace any BT master socket or wiring before it, but im not worried about that, im pretty competent regards the physical wiring aspect, I just need to know if it will work if I do it the way I want to?

Also, does a filtered faceplate improve ADSL line stats, or is it just for neatness?

Thanks for any advice.

r3d

Strictly speaking you shouldn't touch it as the linebox and all cabling from that point back belongs to BT.
What you want to do is possible though. Just remove the old 'oval' box and fit your new linebox there. If you wanted to buy one with a filter built in, it'd look better than the standard ADSL filter I guess. It would mean plugging in your router at that point if that was only socket you were going to fit, and that might involve some work?
Before you do it though, why not try your luck with BT and tell them your phone service is getting a bit noisy at times or something like that? They may well do the job for you.
If not i'd do it myself, it's only a pair of wires at the end of the day, hardly recket science and better than paying some extortionate amount for 5 mins work.

And while you're about it, run some nice shiny new extensions from your handiwork. Top notch stuff.

The ISP I work for has arranged to send BT openreach out to install the correct faceplate in the past. It may be worthwhile asking them to contact openreach.