I appear to have an old type BT phone connection into my flat will I have to have to pay BT TO HAVE IT UPGRADE

Question

The wireing is not in good order and feel it requires renewal but I don`t know who to contact in BT

Answer 1

Yes and BT will fleece you for the privilege of performing the work. With a modicum of DIY skills you can do the work yourself.

Here's how

Find out where the telephone line enters your property. There will be a junction box of some sort. Dependent on the age of the wiring you will have anything from two thick wires (which will make things very simple) to a multi cored 4, 6, or even 8 cored cable. Only two wires are important, usually the “blue pair” that is a blue wire with some white rings and a white wire with some blue rings.

Buy yourself a modern “BT type line jack” an insertion (Krone) tool and some telephone cable from B and Q or somewhere similar. Into the line jack, connect up the two input wires to pins 2 and 5 of the line jack using the insertion tool. With some tidying up, hey presto, you have upgraded your system.

Answer 2

If the phone is directly wired (no plug on the end) then they can and probably will charge you if you just ask for the upgrade. On the other hand if it is a phone that is wired (no plug on the end) then the odds are that you are still paying rental for the phone. If that phone was to be crackling a lot or develop a fault they would have to change the phone free and the new box would be fitted free when they replace the phone. Regarding the line it is upto them, make loads of tea for the engineer and cross your fingers

Answer 3

In the old days of phone monopoly you had to have the phone company do the internal wiring as well as external wiring. Those days are gone.

The phone company installs service to their termination block, called the demark. You pick it up from there. You can hire anyone to do the wiring from the demark. Often you can call the phone company to do this but often this is more costly than others.

Check your yellow pages. Any network and phone company can do this.

If you use the traditional 4 wire phone lines, you will be amazed at how easy it is to do. The red wire goes on the red screw, green wire on the green screw, and I will let you figure out which color screw is used for the yellow and the black wires. You can get all the materials and advice from your local hardware supplier.

Answer 4

if your line is rented off BT they use to offer free of charge to change over from the terminated cable to the plug in type.
do not how ever do it your self as if you require work by BT to be done on your line it will coast you a fortune. a friend of mine started to argue with the BT engineer when he want to charge him £100 because he had interfering with there equipment so the engineer walked out leaving him a box but not connected . he cant use the net as his line is still on pulse .

Answer 5

It depends what your interpretation of old type BT phone connection, do you mean the little rectangular box? Contact BT on 0800 800 151, they will be able to advise best.

Answer 6

I think that those old ones are now obsolete now.

Check your phone directory for contacting bt and that you want to report a problem. Then you can discuss with them whether they will charge to get it replaced for you.

Answer 7

You may be able to buy an adaptor that fits the old-style plug but allows you to plug in a modern phone. If you're only running one or two phones, that would be the most economical and simplest thing to do.