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[Davey4321]

In September last year I moved into my new property. On acquiring this property I had Openreach call to reconnect the phone line both at the property and the on street cabinet a short distance away. The engineer came and fitted a new master socket to an old outlet (property built in 1976) which was already there. After sometime a difficulty in establishing a connection I had a working phone/broadband connection. The connection has always been slightly unstable.

I’ve just got round to doing modernisation in the living room where the replacement socket was placed and have discovered that the socket is fed by a cable which leads to a an old socket (probably from when the property was built) in the kitchen. (A socket which the engineer said was an old Telewest one). Anyway the point of my post is that the cable has at sometime been cut and been bodged up with insulation tape. The cable where the bodge joint has been made is of two differing sizes. The cable coming from the old socket is of a smaller size up to the join and then is larger after the join. This join is only say six inches from the new master socket and was hidden under carpeting.

My question is who would be responsible for the repair if I  called Openreach? I don’t really want to be saddled with their call out costs which from reading in here are quite high.

Thanks in advance.

Images here https://postimg.cc/gallery/gZw2b0F

[burakkucat]

Welcome to the Kitz forum. 

If I have understood things correctly, both sockets and the associated wiring are within Openreach's domain. It would be your service provider's responsibility to request any necessary remedial action by Openreach.

I don't like the idea of wiring hidden under carpeting. It seems to imply that somebody -- the last owner/occupier of the property, perhaps -- has made some "modifications".

If you could take a series of photographs --

• Where the service cable/lead-in enters the property
• The kitchen socket, both external and internal showing the wiring
• The botched joint under the carpet
• The new socket, fitted as part of the service provision, both external and internal showing the wiring

-- and then upload them to a photo-sharing site (say https://postimages.org/ for example) so that we can examine the details, we could then advise, as appropriate.

[Davey4321]

Thanks Burakkucat

I’ve uploaded images here. https://postimg.cc/gallery/gZw2b0F

There is no external wiring to the house and I’m assuming that the wire comes into house below ground. I didn’t want to remove the insulation tape incase the joint just falls to bits.

Once again thanks for your thoughts.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Its a tricky one, as if they fed it into the socket BEFORE the one you're using, they would likely consider it your problem.  But putting it into a Telewest box seems an odd choice, surely they should be accountable for putting it into hardware that isn't theirs?

Will be interesting to see what they have to say for themselves.  I would have thought on a new physical connection they would have to make good up to the box they put in which they clearly didn't.

[Davey4321]

Thanks Alex Atkins Uk.

The Openreach engineer asked where the main socket was and the kitchen one was the first I showed him. He said it was Telewest box before moving to what he said was main socket. He didn’t follow the wire back so didn’t really know where it entered the house. If he had followed it he would have seen the joint in the wire, which is literally 6 inches away from the socket he fitted. All very frustrating

[Alex Atkin UK]

Basically the principle is its Openreach property up to the main socket, so if he incorrect identified the main socket then logically they have to put that right.

Its baffling they didn't check to be sure by disconnecting each socket and checking which cable is "live".

[stevebrass]

Essentially, you asked BT to provide a phone line and judging from those pictures this they have not done to an acceptable specification.

Putting a new socket on the end of copper based spaghetti is not I think acceptable. The engineer should have sorted out where the copper enters your house and provided a socket there or some other mutually acceptable place.

Really, it should have been obvious to the engineer that the master socket is not connected to the incoming BT copper and they should have spent a bit of time tracking things down.

Definitely raise it with BT as unsatisfactory work.

[Davey4321]

Alex Atkins and Steve Brass,  I was thinking along those lines myself. Just want to be talking from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.

[burakkucat]

Hmm . . . That's somewhat messy and old. A little worse than I thought it would be.

So we can see that the socket in the kitchen is not connected to any of the wiring and just covers the recessed back-box. Within that box is an old style, screw terminal block and a muddle of wiring. It confirms that the service feed is underground . . .  as far as I can tell.

It appears that CW1308 cable, from a earlier era, probably two pair (blue/orange pair 1 & green/brown pair 2), has been run into the room and under the edge of the carpet to a socket in the vicinity of the current Openreach fitted NTE5C plus SSFP. A some time in the past, a botch joint to a short length of more recent CW1308 cable (probably three pair) was added. Something seems to have "occurred" in that corner of the room. I can't quite make out what but it appears that the new NTE5C plus SSFP is attached to some plate or board, upon which the old, replaced, socket had been mounted.

It might be best for you to look in your local press for a classified advertisement by an ex-telecom engineer and have that under the edge of the carpet wiring replaced with new, along with tidying up within the the back-box of the redundant socket in the kitchen.

Although it is something that I (or quite a few other members) could do, I would not like to try to tell you how to do it yourself.

[I see that a number of new posts have been made whilst I was typing a reply and valid points have been made. For completeness, I'll leave the above.]

[burakkucat]

Basically the principle is its Openreach property up to the main socket, so if he incorrect identified the main socket then logically they have to put that right.

Its baffling they didn't check to be sure by disconnecting each socket and checking which cable is "live".

I wonder if it was a contractor from Kelly Communications or M.J.Quinn and not an Openreach employee?

[Davey4321]

Thanks everybody. When I opened the old socket it more or less made up my mind to have a professional in be it an independent or Openreach. Looks way too old and too risky to mess with. As I said in an earlier post best to have some knowledge before speaking with Openreach.

[burakkucat]

Do please keep us updated with any developments.

[Davey4321]

Indeed I will Burakkucat

[meritez]

I wonder if it was a contractor from Kelly Communications or M.J.Quinn and not an Openreach employee?

I tend to find Kelly and Quinn contractors tend to do simpler jobs, and usually connect a line as part of multi engineer install, you never find them as the sole engineer on a simultaneous provide.

@Davey4321, what's the voice quality like when you make and receive calls?

[Alex Atkin UK]

I tend to find Kelly and Quinn contractors tend to do simpler jobs, and usually connect a line as part of multi engineer install, you never find them as the sole engineer on a simultaneous provide.

@Davey4321, what's the voice quality like when you make and receive calls?

Kelly did my second line.