Splitting BT external telephone cable?

smurof

Hi,
Has anyone experienced issues with splitting the external bt phone line to create another master socket?

BT a couple of years ago moved an external phone wire on the outside of my house to relocate my master socket a few meters in the same room.
They jointed the existing wire to a new run with one of those reusable scotch/jointing boxes (not the resin ones).

I would like to split this wire from the location of the external joint box and send another CW1128 cable into the loft and create another 'master socket'.
would this work well or receive line conflicts?

I have BT infinity2 fibre - 76Mb

Thanks

mickevh

OpenReach own the telephone infrastructure up to and including the master socket and you are not at liberty to do anything with it as it is not "yours" - you are supposed to get OpenReach to do any work if you want anything changed. If you do do the work yourself (people do)  and there's a ever a problem with it, OpenReach could slap you with a hefty bill for "putting right" anything they regard as "damaged" by you. The master socket is the demarcation point between what belongs to OpenReach and what belongs to you.

Incidentally, BT and OpenReach are different companies albeit both "BT" with a firewall between them. They were broken up a few years ago to stop what is now OpenReach who effectively have a monopoly position in that they own most of the telephone infrastructure - the wires in the ground - offering favourable rates to BT compared to all the other service providers - Virgin, PlusNet, Sky, etc. etc. So if you want work done moving your phone line, it's OpenReach that'll be doing it, though BT (Retail,) if they are your service provider, may broker it for you. Confusing, I know, as they are both branded "BT" businesses, but if we keep in mind that they are separate companies and why they were separated, it helps figuring out "what's up" why we are talking to them and it sounds like one doesn't know what's happening in the other.

It's a while since I did any telecoms, but master sockets are more than just the (bureaucratic) demarcation point, there's actually some electronics in them (which secondary sockets lack.) POTS phones are wired "common bus" (unlike ethernet) so splicing in additional lobes shouldn't be a big deal (though my electrical engineers colleagues may disagree as such things could be upsetting the electrical performance characteristics of the line) and possibly having more than one master socket on a line could be a problem for similar reasons. If you have Infinity, it's possible your incumbent MS is the type with built in DSL splitter and I could conceive that adding another MS (effectively) upstream of it might compromise your broadband.

However, the point seems moot as you shouldn't be messing with anything up to and including the MS in the first place - as discussed, you should get OpenReach in to do the work.

Of course, there's nothing to stop you running additional extensions downstream of the MS, though these would not need to be terminated onto master sockets - they would (should) only be secondary sockets (which lack the electronics of MS's.)

It may be worth exploring why you want to do this. If (for example) it's to facilitate a telephone handset in your loft, no problem (though it would be best to string up a secondary socket downstream of the master.) If you are thinking of having another router up there, then that won't work as you can only have one router on the end of the phone line. If you want to get Wi-Fi up there, there may be other options we can explore.

Kristian

What Mick said ^^.  You can only have one master socket.  What are you trying to achieve, maybe we can hep with that.