Who maintains the Open reach boxes in the home?

Zaphan58

Zaphan58

Zaphan58

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Ok so my parents just moved house. The Open reach box is practically hanging off the wall with a few wires detached. They got broadband with Plus Net and at first it wouldn't work but then they said to unscrew the cover from it and plug the router into the socket behind the cover which seems to have worked. But having looked at it myself I've noticed the router is connected at 400kbps... sloooow.

Does anyone know who's responsibility it is to maintain the Open reach boxes in the house?
 
It depends.

Calling out Openreach just to secure the backing box to the wall would be an expensive option. It's just basic diy.

They'll often be wires apparently hanging off. One pair of wires will connect to BT's side of the socket. The cable they use is usually multi-pair so there are unused wires they'll just tuck out of the way.

Anything on your side of the socket is just extension wiring and not Openreach's problem.

Post come pictures of what you've got and you'll get better advice.

Also use BT's availability checker to see what the connection speed should be at that address.
 
Just buy a new pre-filtered faceplate and do it yourself. It's technically the wrong thing to do, but nobody is going to sue you.

e; Just to point out, I've done this probably close to 100 times, Openreach suck, do it yourself and do it right - It's not like they inspect.
 
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The design of the NTE is such that adding a filtered faceplate can be done without touching the network-side cabling. That was one of the design goals.

Openreach will only care if you change the socket itself and do it wrong.
 
Thanks for the advice all. Spoke to PlusNet again and they have said so long as the service works plugged in to the test socket on the master socket then OpenReach will do nothing. They said the face plate is not their responsibility.

Anyway after having a poke about it doesn't seem as bad as I thought. Although no ideas what the previous owner was doing!

There were two sets of wires hanging out of the face plate, some punched in to the pin connections and some not. When I followed the two sets out of the box they both ran down the wall and were cut off at the bottom. So I pulled them out the face plate and off the wall since they were cut at the other end. I think these were just for extension sockets that have been disconnected.

Anyway with the face plate pushed back on the master socket you still can't connect to the internet. It only connects with the face plate off and plugged directly in to the test socket. My question is, should there be some wires from the master socket connecting to the faceplate? Or should the male/female socket connection between the two be enough for it to work? I'm not sure if the face plate is just faulty and needs replacing or if there is some wiring missing. My presumption was the pins in the faceplate are just for extension sockets?

Here is how I left it.It works but obviously would prefer the faceplate to work so it looks a bit neater!

IMG_20161211_125358.jpg
 
Are you plugging your router into a microfilter into the bottom socket on the faceplate when it's all back together?
 
Caged said:
Are you plugging your router into a microfilter into the bottom socket on the faceplate when it's all back together?
Click to expand...

I honestly can't remember if it was plugged with phone in the bottom and router in the top or if the filter was left on and both were plugged in the phone line. I'll take a look next time I go around there.
 
The part that is hanging out is a MK2 filtered faceplate and the front test socket.

These sockets are designed to have the network wiring (A+B wires) terminated to the back of the test socket which remains screwed into the backbox.

Then the test socket is the user removable section, where extension wiring terminates. Depending on the age it could have 5,4 or 3 terminals. You only need pins 2 and 5 for most phones.

Attached to your test socket is the filtered faceplate which removes the need for ADSL filters. If you put that back together and plugged your router into the top RJ11 socket your broadband will work and you can remove ADSL filters from other equipment such as other phones, Sky boxes etc as everything is filtered for telephone use.

If you require your router to be located elsewhere, look at the back of the filtered plate. There might be two pins labelled A and B which you can terminate an extension onto and terminate the other end in your house to an RJ11 module and plug your router in that way. But you might need a MK3 filter for that, as I can't remember if the MK2 had that capability.
 
You could remove the faceplate from the mk2 filter and put it back on the socket and use the microfilter, if it's not working it's probably an extension causing a fault. I would also advise against calling openreach out you decide it back on the wall as they will 100% charge your provider, who will probably charge you
 
swinnie said:
The part that is hanging out is a MK2 filtered faceplate and the front test socket.

These sockets are designed to have the network wiring (A+B wires) terminated to the back of the test socket which remains screwed into the backbox.

Then the test socket is the user removable section, where extension wiring terminates. Depending on the age it could have 5,4 or 3 terminals. You only need pins 2 and 5 for most phones.

Attached to your test socket is the filtered faceplate which removes the need for ADSL filters. If you put that back together and plugged your router into the top RJ11 socket your broadband will work and you can remove ADSL filters from other equipment such as other phones, Sky boxes etc as everything is filtered for telephone use.

If you require your router to be located elsewhere, look at the back of the filtered plate. There might be two pins labelled A and B which you can terminate an extension onto and terminate the other end in your house to an RJ11 module and plug your router in that way. But you might need a MK3 filter for that, as I can't remember if the MK2 had that capability.
Click to expand...

Thank you that explains it great. I think the router is fine living right next to the socket so there won't be any extensions needed. I will check the face plate is all plugged in properly next time I go over.
 
It's years since I had to book faults tech's out, but the policy was always that the phone provider was liable for anything up to and including the master socket, now in this case I see plusnet are trying to say it's only up to the test socket on the primary socket. That doesn't work for me as if the face plate is faulty and generates a NDT (No Dial Tone) fault then the operator needs to resolve it with a service call which should be free. TBH you could replace the face plate yourself quickly and easily in this case, but it shouldn't be your job.
 
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