Fitting BT Infinity - what exactly is involved?
Discussion
I succumbed to a sales call from India a few weeks ago and the BT sales person convinced me that BT Infinity is a good idea, same price as my existing BT Broadband service and far quicker.
Last year I had BT engineer round to fix a few things and he spoke about Infinity needing a new wall box and stuff and sating it's not as straight forward as BT make out. I explained this to the sales person but in the end agreed to an engineer coming and if I'm not happy with what's involved I'll tell him not to bother.
What I can't understand is i) what exactly is my "master phone socket"? BT's wires emerge from the street in my garage (where there is a big brown connector box) and then they disappear in a few directions inside the walls of the house. There is one blanked off socket in the hall - unused, one leading from the garage to the lounge which has the hard wired phone and a spur to my lounge Sky Box - then there is another spur from the garage to my study which is where my current PC/wireless modem/router etc. sits - and finally a wire goes up through the roof across to the bedroom for my Sky box in the bedroom.
Can they fit the Infinity plate & modem in my study without affecting the other legs of the system running from the entry point in the garage? I guess the system has grown over the years and it "just works" fine... Thoughts?
This is the bit that's confused me...
<BT Web Site Says:> "Your engineer will attach a new faceplate to your master phone socket. This means you'll only be able to use existing phone extension sockets for phone calls and not for connecting a computer. Depending on your set-up, this means you might not be able to use any existing wire-connected computer in its current location. Your engineer will be happy to talk about your options
Last year I had BT engineer round to fix a few things and he spoke about Infinity needing a new wall box and stuff and sating it's not as straight forward as BT make out. I explained this to the sales person but in the end agreed to an engineer coming and if I'm not happy with what's involved I'll tell him not to bother.
What I can't understand is i) what exactly is my "master phone socket"? BT's wires emerge from the street in my garage (where there is a big brown connector box) and then they disappear in a few directions inside the walls of the house. There is one blanked off socket in the hall - unused, one leading from the garage to the lounge which has the hard wired phone and a spur to my lounge Sky Box - then there is another spur from the garage to my study which is where my current PC/wireless modem/router etc. sits - and finally a wire goes up through the roof across to the bedroom for my Sky box in the bedroom.
Can they fit the Infinity plate & modem in my study without affecting the other legs of the system running from the entry point in the garage? I guess the system has grown over the years and it "just works" fine... Thoughts?
This is the bit that's confused me...
<BT Web Site Says:> "Your engineer will attach a new faceplate to your master phone socket. This means you'll only be able to use existing phone extension sockets for phone calls and not for connecting a computer. Depending on your set-up, this means you might not be able to use any existing wire-connected computer in its current location. Your engineer will be happy to talk about your options
Great all sounds good, thanks. I agree too about the BT engineers, the one I had round last year was basically because my ADSL was running slow and he spent a good hour refreshing all the joints and stuff and quadrupled the speed - very helpfull. All my PCs/printer/Sky Anytime dongle are wireless and the router is in the study so sounds like he can just replace the study socket, fix the new modem to the wall and the router can stay where it is sitting on the window cill by my desk 
Mr Pointy said:
I'm not sure it is going to be quite as simple as you hope. It sounds from your description that the socket you want to to be the Master & where the new router is connected to is on the end of a spur & is not the first box that the incoming BT wire is connected to.
I fear you may be right. The incoming BT wire goes into a juntion box in my garage (circled) and from that there are two wires going into the house ( 1 lounge and 2 bedroom) also when I had ISDN comverted to ADSL the engineer ran an third lead from this wall box through the back of my garage and round the outside to my study. So in effect there are three legs coing off that box on the wall in the garage. p.s. My house has it's living space all above the garage...
Deva Link said:
RichB said:
There is one blanked off socket in the hall - unused,
Is that on the opposite side of the wall to where the junction box is? It's the logical place for the master socket to be, and it seems most odd that BT people have wired your other extensions from the junction box unless it was done many years ago and each socket has a ring capacitor in it.
I'm happy with that.Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff