Advice please on state of external cabling

[sokar]

Hi all,

My folks have just moved into a new house and are wanting to get Sky laid on for all 3 services. They are (and I still am) in a cable area and have never used ADSL before.

The BT phone has been taken over, new number, no existing BB to the house. Although the phone works fine I'm a bit concerned about the state of the wiring going into the house.....



As you can see, there are only 2 wires actually connected and the rest just a mess

Their local exchange is Hoo (NDHOO) and will be Connect and I'm a bit worried this wiring won't be good enough to sustain the BB

Can anyone advise please whether it's normal or not?

Many thanks

p.s. that's exactly how the wires were found hanging out of the box..... I didn't touch them

[penrhyn]

Thats not normal, someone has illegally rewired the phone. It looks as if the master socket has been bypassed which is illegal.
You don't have much alternative than to get on to BT to fix it, thy may waive the charge as you found it this way.

[pete.i]

I wouldn't say that has been illegaly wired up, it looks like a BT job to me. If you look carefully on the partially open box lid there is a "T" symbol and that is the symbol that BT used to have on their boxes. What has been done , though by the looks of it, is that the previous owner has tied up his/her nasturtians, peonies, sweet william or whatever flowers using the wire as a support and that shouldn't have happened. The two wire connection is correct and the curled up extra wire is a normal tellecommunications way (BT or anyone else) way of stowing extra wires in a junction box. BUT because some strain has been put on the cable by the tie for the flowers that could well have caused the cable connections to have come loose or possibly not make a good connection.

I think I would delicately cut the flower supporting string from the cable (both pieces) and then give bt a call to come and check the box. They may charge you or they may not. Ultimately it's not their fault that someone tied thier flowers to BTs bit of wire. Rough I know but the box definetly needs to be checked.

[richone54]

its odd, i would have thought the line from the ground would come up and go into the box, then through the wall to a master socket ?
is there a hole in the wall for a wire to go through in the box ?

and what sort of socket dose the white whire go to ?

[sokar]

Thanks for the help guys

Delicately cut...... I'm gonna rip the bloody lot of the bushes out as they block the gas and electricity cupboards as well

The white wire seems to go straight into a normal single socket looking box on the wall inside. No trailing wire inside, just straight into the box.

I'll give them a call but hope they wont charge my folks as they only moved in a week and a half a go and that's how it was found.

So are you saying that there is only 2 wires (the blue ones) going into the house anyway, even on a normal installation, and that's enough to support the broadband as well?

Many thanks

[pete.i]

Well as Richone54 says the wires would normally go through a hole in the wall into the back of your main BT socket in the house. This ususally, but not always, is situated near to your front door. All the wires go to the main box but usually only 3 or 4 are connected. The only ones used these days, though, are the main pair that sends and transmits the voice signal and your adsl signal to your telephone and broadband box. The others are ring wires, not used these days. I cannot remember the colour coding of the wires but there are stickies (look below Richone54's post above) that will tell you what the colour coding is and which wires can be safely (and it is recommended that you or someone removes the extra wires) removed. These extra wires can act as arials picking up noise which is then introduced to your telephone line and weakening your adsl signal. Again all this is explained in various stickies posted around this forum

The set up that you have is definetely not "normal" BT practice, I have to admit, as far as the grey box with the "T" logo on it is concerned but curling the wires up is although this is usually done inside the master socket inside your house.

Before you start doing anything with that box I would have a good look at the stickies on various posters posts in here and I think that if you are in any doubt whatsoever then it might be a good idea to get BT in and if they do charge you better to bite the bullet rather than mess everything up.

[eyemdee]

Personally I would not bother calling out BT as you can do a tidier job yourself. Your line looks correct - the blue/white pair should be connected to two wires coming from the ground, often orange and white. They are crimped together using gel filled Scotchlok type connectors to keep moisture out.

Clip the black cable from the ground to the wall and push everything back inside the black box. I also sealed any gaps where the cables entered the box using Blutak or something similar to keep snails out as there was a colony living in mine!

I don't think moving or tidying their cabling would be considered as interfering with it and it is not worth the risk of a £100 call out charge to have an engineer turn up and just push everything back into the box!

[sokar]

Thanks again guys. Think I'll just poke em back in the box for now then and advise them to go ahead and get connected and see what happens. It's just that they're in their sixties and feel a little intimidated when it comes to techy things and the utility companies..... didn't want them going ahead and then being fobbed of between Sky and BT blaming each other for the next six months :/