Installing New Phone Socket

[#1]

Hi,

A BT engineer is coming to activate my fibre broadband on Friday. I've been advised that they won't need to access my property during this visit, so long as I have a working phone socket. We are currently renovating our house and the phone socket is currently out of the wall with exposed wires. I think it's safe to assume it's not live or working.

Will the engineer therefore need access to my property during the visit? I need to know so I can ensure someone is in.

Thanks

[#2]

Welcome to the forum.

The question has to be what wires? It only needs two incoming wires for the socket to be live and working, other wires could go to extensions. For information extension wires are your responsibility but only BT enginners should touch the incoming cable. If these are disconnected you need to sweet talk the BT guy when he calls if you are to avoid a charge. I believe that tea and biscuits help!

If you need more information it would help if you could post photos of what you have.

[#3]

Welcome to our community forums @AML.

I'm afraid with Fibre orders, we do not have the option to request an engineer attends the property and if a visit is required they'd generally just pop round to see if you're in while they're assigned the job, or if they're unable to reach you, they'd send it back to us to then book an appointment.

Having said this, I wouldn't be able to make any guarantees that an engineer would 100% attend the property based off of what you've said.

[#4]

No worries - I’ll see what happens on Friday. Cheers

[#5]

Hi,

I assume the engineer came on Friday as I got all the right messages saying my connection was set up and to plug in my router.

Unfortunately (and as expected due to the state of our current living arrangements) it doesn't seem to be working. I left everything set up for over 24 hours and am still getting the blinking red 'b'  

I also attach images of the wires I'm dealing with. To note is that I can only connect to the furthest phone point (i.e. NOT the one next to the window in the photos) as that's the only room with electricity right now...

I appreciate I might be clutching at straws here, but is it worth getting an electrician to take a look at this, or would a designated engineer visit be required?

Thanks again for your help.

[#6]

From these photographs it's far from obvious which, if any, is the master socket. The whole lot needs ripping out and starting again. I believe that Plusnet will arrange for a BT engineer to come and 'move' a master socket for £165. I would decide where you want the master socket in the future and go down this route, let the BT guy sort out your incoming cable then ditch the rest.

You then need to ask yourself whether you need extension cables. They can have a detrimental effect, be it minor if wired correctly on broadband performance. These days cordless phones with multiple handsets and built in answerphones are cheap so it's very easy to live without telephone extension cable routed all over the house.

[#7]

Thanks - that's kind of what I was expecting to be honest (literally everything in the house needs replacing!).

How do I go about getting an engineer appointment?

[#8]

I agree with @Baldrick1  - it's a dog's breakfast!

It looks like you're in the middle of a Minor () refurbish at the moment and not really ready for BT to do a re-wire job?

If you want to take a punt to get things moving then here's a suggestion:

• I'd guess that the socket next to the window is the Master. (Guesswork!)
• Run a power extension into that room.
• Remove the lower half of the socket - (you should find the test socket here?) 
• Plug the filter / router into the test socket.

If this works, then you can sort out some temporary 'jury rig' to get you going in amongst the chaos.

[#9]

Thanks - yes I'll definitely try that. Minor is an understatement!

In the meantime, can I ask a couple more questions:

• what happens about payment, as we've obviously gone live but are unable to use the service
• (in the fullness of time / if the suggestion above doesn't work) how do I arrange an engineer visit?

Thanks

[#10]

My guess is that if you've gone live but can't use the service because of issues beyond the control of Plusnet then you'll probably have to take the hit. To get an Engineer out you'll need to contact Plusnet. Hopefully a Plusnet staffer will come along and pick this up and sort this out. Alternatively I'm afraid that you'll have to ring or use live chat.

[#11]

Hi @AML, sorry to hear you're having broadband issues. Checking your connection from this side we aren't seeing any connection getting to the router as seen by the test results below. The testing is identifying a potentially issue within the customer apparatus so this could be a result of the current state of the master socket shown in the photo's above. 

Test Outcome	Fail
Test Outcome Code	GTC_FTTC_SERVICE_1101
Description	Modem at End User is not synchronised with the RDSLAM port. Check function of modem before submitting fault report
Main Fault Location	CA
Sync Status	Out Of Sync

I'd recommend from here then, before we look at re-arranging the location/replacement of your master socket we do a few checks your side to see if we can get the connection in sync and if this fails the next step would be to arrange a engineer to come out and investigate sooner.

Can you run through our troubleshooting guides here, let us know how you get on: http://goo.gl/p2tpvL

The next thing would be to rule your internal wiring out by plugging the connection into your test socket which is under the face plate of your master socket and seeing if the connection returns. This rules out internal wiring, face plates and extension sockets as being the cause. How to locate the test socket and set your connection into it can be found here:
https://community.plus.net/t5/Library/Testing-From-The-Master-Socket/ba-p/1322242

Let us know how it goes as this will determine where we go from here.