This is at my daughters new (well over 100 years old) house that is being refurbished and extended before moving in.
There was a (non-working) BT master socket in the hall, it was knocked off by the builders and subsequently plastered over!
Outside the wire to that went straight through the wall then ran several metres (alongside another phone cable) to a weird rectangular black junction box (about 6" * 4" * 2") at DPC level, secured only by a tucked-in cable tie (not latched).
Into that junction box, and partly wired (all 3) together in two gel crimps were 3 phone cables:
1. Coming out of the ground, paired with an unterminated coax, a 4-core cable of which 2 were crimped and two not.
2. Along the wall, from the BT Master socket (RIP) a 4-core cable with the blue/white and white/blue pair in the crimps.
3. Also along the wall, a 6-core cable with the orange/white and white/orange pair in the crimps. A third core (one of the blue ones IIRC) was also in one of the crimps!
The 6-core cable ran back, past the master socket hole, round the house and up to the eaves, then across the road to a BT pole.
So, my best guess is that the underground cables are Virgin, the overhead is BT and they have been bodged by a previous occupant when switching between the 2 services. There had been a lot of coax around the house removed by the builders, presumably distributing the Virgin TV.
I decided to test the cables and found:
1: One "underground" pair had 60v between them, the others were dead. Connecting a phone you got "noises" but no dial tone.
2. Ignored this as nothing was connected to it at the house end and we could follow the entire run. Obviously the feed from junction box to master socket inside.
3. Tested every pair, no voltages at all and connecting a phone to each in turn it was totally silent.
Can anyone think why on earth there was a 3-way connection at the junction box between what appears to be Virgin, BT and the house master socket?
And what about the 60V, is that normal? I believe BT use 50V.
They have ordered a Sky package including broadband, is it the case that Sky will install a conventional phone line using Openreach?
A Sky engineer has visited once and basically said, get the builders to run some coax (he left a load) if they can (with long tails) and I'll come back when they're finished! Would Sky have activated a phone line already or do they wait for an engineer on site to tell them to proceed?
My sister is muttering about talking to BT to get the phone working first but I said there's no point if you're ordering via Sky. Luckily they have a newish phone mast nearby so get good 4G coverage.
Any and all thoughts welcome.