Installing New Phone Socket

[#1]

Hello. I'm a new broadband and phone customer. I've never had a landline in my life (been using mobiles). I've booked an installation as there is no socket in the house I've been living in for the last 4 years (the wire is cut from the outside). I have a couple of questions: firstly, will the engineer fit a dual master socket (that has a filtered VDSL socket and separate socket for the phone)? And if not should buy the socket I want and have it ready for the installer? Also I assume there's no issue with installing the new master socket in the upstairs front bedroom? Grateful for advise. Thanks.

[#2]

The Openreach engineer will supply you with the filtered master socket, so no need to purchase your own, as for where they will install it, you shouldn't have any issues so long as they can get the dropwire to where you want it to be, if not, it may be a case of putting a socket back where one originally was...

[#3]

Thanks for your reply. Do you know if I can ask the engineer for a dual socket or will I simply have to take what I'm given even if it's a single socket?

[#4]

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It will be a filtered master socket, with one outlet for your phone and a second one for your router's broadband to plug in. The filter is built in to the modern masters. It would be an unusual request to want two phone outlets co-located. From the master socket you could wire (yourself) as many more slave phone outlets as you want. I installed one slave phone socket in almost every room, in the pre-wireless phone days. BT can install them, but at extra cost.

You could if you wished, plug a plug-in filter in any of the slave sockets, to allow your router to be plugged in there, instead of at the master socket - but you might achieve a faster connection, with it plugged into the master.

BT will usually install the master, where it reasonably suits the engineer best - tea and biscuits might help persuade them 🙂

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): Full quote of preceding post removed as per Forum rules.

[#5]

You'll most likely get the filtered one (which is two sockets) as below, or similar depending on what version the engineer has in their van...

[#6]

Thanks for the picture twocvbloke. This is the dual socket I meant. Hopefully this, or similar, is what the engineer will use.

[#7]

Ours is dual socket - one for the phone, one for the fibre modem. If you want dual phones then you can just buy a small adapter and plug that in. You can also get adapters with an extension wired up to them.

Incidentally you're one of the few people i've come across who has gone the mobile route for so long without the tie-down of a landline. What changed your mind?

When i last lived by myself the landline was an unwanted cost but mobile internet didn't exist lol so it was a necessary evil. If I ended up living by myself today there is no way i'd bother with a landline as the cost of the phone and then the internet on top is something i couldn't justify - i hardly use the landline phone!

[#8]

What changed my mind? In a word: NETFLIX

Quality show after quality show. Limited mobile data just wasn't enough.

[#9]

I spent about 3 years using my mobile tethering option (back before VDSL was a thing for the majority, and was cheaper than the cable option at the time) as it was faster and more reliable than the ADSL we had, and prior to moving up to this part of the UK, there was no land-based internet being used, just mobile data, but that was back when Three had their unlimited internet & tethering feature, once they took that away, that's when I signed up for PN...