UK Telephone Wiring, Sockets, Cabling, ADSL / VDSL Filters, Extensions.

Overview of UK telephone installations, master and secondary sockets, ADSL/VDSL filtered sockets, connecting wires to sockets, joining wires together, which wires are actually required and colour codes normally used.
► Support this channel:
Patreon: / jwflame
PayPal Donations: xo4.uk/?PPP
► Social Media:
Twitter: / jwflame
Facebook: / jwflame
Instagram: / jwflame
► Contact info, sending stuff in: etc.:
xo4.uk/?YTT
► Website - More on this video and many other subjects
Website: www.flameport.com

[@vwthings]

Said this before John but you'd make an EXCELLENT radio dj with your dry approach to items that are clearly not up to scratch. John Ward, the John Peel of the electricians world. "Hello, I'm JW"

[@readmore4342]

John Peel...showing your age there lol Great comment .

[@peterk75a]

You've taught me something I was always unsure of and that is the bell circuit. A very clear and informative lesson. Thanks very much.

[@petehiggins33]

Fun fact - When you lifted the handset to dial, the phone shorted the bell wire so that the bells in other phones in the house wouldn't tinkle. It was common to hear phones tinkling because the person who had added a second phone extension didn't understand this and hadn't connected the bell wire.

[@Danechip]

@@petehiggins33 And the first word was 'hello'

[@wisteela]

@@petehiggins33 Reminds me when I used to hack connections together at my parents' house 😋

[@norfolkhall]

This was when the phones has dials, and the ringer was a bell. From what I can remember, the circuit was called a "bell shunt circuit" and was activated when you picked up the handset, and the auxiliary spring set operated, and literally shorted out the bell circuit to stop bell tinkle.

[@Danechip]

@@norfolkhall You could also make calls hitting it quickly in succession.

[@dj_paultuk7052]

Re Colours. Openreach just use regular CAT5 now, with the primary line always using Blue/Blue-White. I work in construction and spend alot of time moving tel lines. OpenReach can now install "Temporary Site DP's" for certain industry's, such as Construction. With these you have permission to add lines yourself, or remove / move lines around.

[@mark123655]

Was wondering about that.. using Cat5/6 and RJ11 or RJ45 has been standard in Australia for most internal wiring for 5-10 years. Means that former phone wires can be quickly reused for data to serve PCs, TVs or WiFi APs fairly easily. All our voice is going VOIP.

[@maximusg88]

Do you think a house built in 2008 would have that in the walls? Wouldn't need the telephone extension socket - but wouldn't mind using it as an ethernet port

[@tomschmidt381]

Interesting discussion about land line telephone wiring. Here on the other side of the pond, telephone implementation is similar but slightly different. 1) Since US deregulation in the mid-1980s the phone company installs a NID, network interface device, very similar to the UK master socket. Modern NIDs use gas tube surge suppression, which replaced the old style carbon block. Being sealed present a very high impedance until the breakdown voltage is reached. The suppressor is connected to both phone wires and ground. This helps reduce both differential mode and common mode voltage spikes. Graham Langley’s comment surprised me because here in the US gas tube suppressors are very common. 2) NIDs often contain a half ringer: Zener diode, resistor and capacitor circuit for the same purpose as the RC network in the UK master socket. They had to be removed in the early days of DSL with pre ITU SDSL. Modern DSL is design to operate in the presence of a half ringer but it does represent a small load so may degrade marginal DSL. 3) In the US the capacitor needed to activate the ringer has always been in the telephone instrument. 4) US homes are normally wired with two pair, because as you mentioned single pair cable is not readily available. 5) The second pair can be used for a second telephone line, very common in the early days of dialup internet access. It was also used in the early days to provide an Earth ground for party line ringing. A party line parallels multiple customers on a single pair of wires and the ground allows selective ringing of each of the two parties. In very rural areas even more customers could share a single expensive phone line. Lastly in the early days of illuminated telephone dials that used an incandescent bulb a small AC transformer sent power down the second pair to illuminate the light. Not that function is performed by a low current LED powered from the phone line. When DSL is used customers have the option of installing a microfilter at each non-DSL device. A better solution is to use a whole house POTS/DSL splitter. Calling it a splitter is somewhat of a misnomer. The DSL modem is feed directly but the splitter has a low pass filter that prevents the high frequencies used for DSL and VDSL from interfering with voice equipment. Not sure how common home alarm systems are in the UK. In the US they are connected ahead of any residential telephone equipment. That way the alarm is able to disconnect an active call if it needs to dial out. Alarm Cell interfaces have become very common for alarms as folks move away from land lines.

[@imark7777777]

Wow thank you for reading my mind. Also on the same side of the pond as you got bored after I learned everything I could and moved on to foreign phone systems. The UK decided that they wanted to mount their ringers on the wall and have lighter phones so they separated out the ringer line to make wearing that easier.

[@twocvbloke]

A note about GPO telephones, in an "unconverted" state, they contain the ringing capacitor, and therefore work as a 2-wire phone, breaking out to 3 or 4 wires at the hard-wired terminal block and going into the phone where depending on its' configuration will send the appropriate voltages to the ringer when on-hook... :)

[@Graham_Langley]

Good point - I don't think anyone's mentioned that the external ringing cap only appeared with the introduction of the master/secondary socket which allowed multiple phones on a line so bell tinkle suppression had to be handled differently.

[@wojciechkonowrocki37]

It may be funny, but when renovating my house I actually used CAT5e to run telephone signal, also the blue pair is used because when you run telephone signal over CAT5e to RJ45 socket you can actually plug in any standard phone cable (in Poland, we use RJ11). In one place I have my master box where everything comes in and btw 100MBPS ethernet only uses green and orange so i ran ADSL over blue pair and backed the Ethernet signal over orange and green, works flawlessly!

[@alerighi]

I would have used two cables, first because ADSL signal can be interfered by ethernet signal and vice versa, second because you would had the option to upgrade to gigabit ethernet more easily. For what it costs a CAT 5e cable better running two just to be future proof.

[@Danechip]

We have RJ11 on the phones but the other end is terminated in 431A that plugs in the wall (Domestic phones). I have not come across any phones that connect to RJ45 without an adapter). As A1eR says, You need all 8 wires for gigabit+ or you will be stuck at 10/100 with just 4. As also mentioned, the 50 Volts CD then the phone would be fine, but anyone ringing changes shit. You then have around 80 volts AC which would play havoc 'cross talking' with the data lines. The very same you do not run data lines parallel with mains power. That will be 100 Sloty please sir 😁

[@H4zuZazu]

@@alerighi Here in DE sometimes the Price for CAT 3 (telephone cable) is often higher than for CAT 7 Cable. So no need to use a CAT.3 and a CAT.7 when you can use CAT./ for everything.

[@Danechip]

@@H4zuZazu I have ran extensions using twin bell in the past. (no pin3 for them to ring though)

[@Bin216]

In that micro filter, one of the capacitors generates a new ring wire at the BT socket, presumably to minimise noise coming from the upstream ring wire.

[@Danechip]

It does ! Nice one Bryn. (what a Welsh name you have there sir)

[@BrianG61UK]

Yes. And despite having acquired a large collection of DSL filters including several different types I have never seen it done any other way.

[@paulgrimshaw6301]

According to thinkbroadband.com VM do now cover the majority of UK premises, just - a little over 51% and still expanding.

[@mlight6275]

back in 1995 worked for mercury and bt owned all exchanges but mercury ran admin and service cheaper so rented out lines cheaper, mobile companies used same system... then went on to installing and managing premium rate call centres and fitting exchanges... a you tube channel called my mate vince is run by an ex telephone engineer and is very interesting..

[@generaldisarray]

Great video.... Just one thing, those British Telecom Plug (BT Plug) @ 29:26, the UK is the only place that uses those, everywhere else uses RJ11 (Registered Jack) connectors for telecoms. I've lost count of the number of them that I've cut of UK based phones/office equipment and re-terminated with RJ11 connectors instead.

[@cjmillsnun]

Hong Kong for many years used BT plug and sockets, and many properties will still have them. I suspect Gibraltar and the Falklands will also use BT plug/socket.

[@dlarge6502]

I find RJ11 so fiddly compared to the BT plug. Plus it is so similar to RJ45 that even I find it difficult to determine which is which and I work in IT. And yes, RJ11 plus and latches into RJ45 just fine...

[@generaldisarray]

@@dlarge6502 That's the beauty of RJ10, RJ11, RJ12, RJ45, etc plugs, especially in an industrial sense, that the RJ45 wall sockets are designed to fit them and align the pins correctly from the centre out. I've worked in IT for almost 3 decades and those BT plugs were just useless to me. I could chop off the BT plug, on new equipment, and re-terminate the cable in RJ11, quicker than finding a BT to RJ11 adaptor. Plus the adaptors were always clunky and just another failure point in the connection chain.

[@johnclarke2997]

Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTP) on Virgin, the telephone connection is on the rear of the Virgin Superhub unit. Downside of this system is the power for the telephone is provided locally, rather than from the exchange.

[@alerighi]

In new 100 or 200Mbit/s FTTC (Fiber To the Cabinet) lines here in Italy they use the two conductors only for the internet, while the phone service is provided via a VOIP service. The line goes to the modem without any filters, and they recommend you to disconnect all the other sockets that can create interference, and remove eventual capacitors/fuses that were installed in old lines (basically the two wires that enter you home needs to go straight into the modem). You can plug analog phones into your router if the router has that facility, or use directly VOIP phones. This has the downside that if the power goes out you cannot use the phone (but still if you had only a cordless you already had this problem, since the cordless base is powered from the mains and not the line), and also if internet doesn't work you cannot make phone calls. But who uses landline phones anyway, I disconnected mine since I received only advertising calls.

[@patdbean]

So with FTTP do you have any phone service in a power cut? Because here I often have no mobile service when the power goes, I would not want to be without landline as well, just when you are most likely to need it.

[@johnclarke2997]

@@patdbean The FTTP box is powered from a 12 volt PSU inside the house. There is NO telecoms wire running alongside the fibre optic cable Virgin Media supply. In the street the fibre optic cable is a green plastic tube which runs underground from a local network distribution point into a FTTP box mounted to one side of the front door of the house. Telephone and Internet are supplied from the same Virgin Media Superhub 3 modem unit. This unit has its own PSU, so if the power failed the FTTP box and the Superhub will not work.

[@Aliens4world]

I replaced my BT socket with MK socket. In BT socket white and orange connected to A and B, but in MK socket there were connections numbering 1-6, when I connected black and green to 2, 5 numbers there was no internet access. It strangely worked with white orange in number 2 , 5

[@eddiespencer1]

Here in the US, some people still lease their telephones from their phone company.

[@imark7777777]

Well yeah I get a discount rate for "only" using a rotary dial pulse phone. Actually I finally broke down and bought myself a Bluetooth Gateway Bridge so I could finally use my wired phones after not having a landline for many years.

[@TheChipmunk2008]

My internet only line is simply cat6 from the JB outside straight to a matter skt in the loft next to the router. Installed it myself ... Openreach were more than happy to let me do it

[@abdulseaforth6930]

Thank you

[@jonathonshanecrawford1840]

New Zealand uses "BT" telephones as well, if would like to update this video, please do.

[@bdf2718]

Filtering is a little more complicated than you explained. Every phone needs to be filtered. This can either be a micro-filter at each socket or a socket plate with built-in filter. The problem comes with having a built-in filter at the master socket. A built-in filter at the master socket conveniently means that all the extensions pass through that same filter. No need for micro-filters or socket-plate filters on each extension. But that means you can *only* plug your modem into the outlet on the master socket. Not a problem if your computer uses a wi-fi connection, but if you want a wired connection and the master socket is in a different room to where your computer is, that sucks. Yes, you could stick a micro-filter on an extension socket and plug your router into that, but it's not going to work because the ADSL signal is removed from the extension wiring by the filter in the master socket. It is possible to get variant removable bits for standard master sockets which do have a built-in filter but pass the raw phone line rather than the filtered line to the extension wiring. Or you can do naughty things at the master socket, wiring your extension cable directly to the A and B terminals. That's illegal and OpenReach will get very upset if they catch you doing that.

[@AndyK.1]

bdf2718 Most of them have a second set of AB terminals to allow a router to be connected in a remote location.

[@bdf2718]

@@AndyK.1 Ah, must have been one of the newer redesigns added those.

[@AndyK.1]

Most of them have it. Either 2 IDC on their own on filter plate or what you may have mistaken for pins 1&6

[@bdf2718]

@@AndyK.1 Most of them have it now. Back when I last looked at one physically (many years ago) it didn't. Hmm, I think it didn't.

[@mango3586]

how would you connect telephone bell

[@AndyK.1]

Between 3 and 5

[@Lion19722]

Hi , I need to move a box, I have a punch down tool for refitting the wire. But how do I remove the wires that are currently punched in. Is it just a matter of pulling up to release them? Thanks

[@jwflame]

Yes, they just pull out. Some of the installation tools include a hook for that purpose.

[@Lion19722]

John Ward thank you

[@jackhutchinson5129]

My internet keeps cutting out 3 or 4 times a day I rang the service providers and I got told to remove the face plate off the wall (not open reach) and noticed there was2 wires not connected at the back is that normal ?

[@jwflame]

Yes, there are usually 2 pairs (4 wires), only 2 are required for a phone line. The others are there if someone wanted to go back in time 30 years and have a second phone line installed when such things were actually used.

[@ericmcrae7758]

You are out of date, I have just had fibre fitted for internet. There is no copper in that circuit. The telephone is still copper but will be fibre when the technology catches up.

[@stephenwhitmore7700]

boring me so much i fell asleep

[@ShelliLoop]

Typical blabber.... yadda yadda.

[@g0fvt]

Quickly reverse engineering from a freezeframe at 26:53 you can see that the ADSL/VDSL port is a direct connection to the line and there is a low-pass filter to the phone port. Nevertheless an interesting video, those jelly crimps look damn useful.

[@Graham_Langley]

Correct. And there's a bell ring cap after the filter.

[@rcortland]

Even though a good deal of your content is UK-specific and perhaps not terribly relevant on my side of the Atlantic, it's presented well and is still very interesting. I enjoy understanding how things work and differ in other parts of the world.

[@Agent24Electronics]

Actually all this is very similar in New Zealand too, but we don't have those master sockets with the removable test plate, and maybe the wiring colours are different.

[@Ivorbiggin]

Agent24 Same in Australia But having said a lot of people are moving away from home phones now

[@Danechip]

@@Ivorbiggin Don't you have a boomerang on string? Worked for Mick Dundee :D

[@alexcantley9137]

Britain is now going IP starting this year 😃

[@dlarge6502]

@@alexcantley9137 oh god no

[@imark7777777]

I'll give you credit for a very good video but the filter filters out the high frequency from The Voice side of the jack and usually just passes straight through to the DSL modem unaltered. Essentially flip flop from your diagram this also prevents picking up a voice line and breaking the high-frequency connection to the modem and knocking off the internet. I am very fascinated with telephones to the extent that I have research UK telephone wiring even though I live in the u.s. for some strange reason.

[@duci71k]

Well John..that was the best description of how the to understand those 2 wires coming into the house that I have seen on the internet. Superb, very well spoken with a touch of humour that had me laughing for hours after I viewed it. You are a true professional and that was a masterclass not to be missed. Thank you sir...

[@Blade-420]

up until 5:56 ,everything is exactly the same here in the US. except your phone jack connectors are different. we use RJ-11 which has a smaller tab on the bottom opposed to the larger one on the side of yours. and is used for both phone and Internet connections. our phone system does not have a master jack with all the circuitry.just punch down , or screw terminals on the cheaper varieties. using the Green [Tip] and red wire [ring] for line 1 and yellow and black for line 2. we also have an optional inside line wire maintenance. service, in which the phone co. comes in and repairs any faults, problems at a ongoing monthly cost, or you can DYI , if you are familiar with the wiring.

[@Graham_Langley]

Some corrections and further info typed as I watched the video. 1) The spark gap has been deleted from modern NTEs as it apparently was found to adversely affect VDSL signals. 2) The 470k resistor is called the out-of-service resistor and is there to permit remote line testing when there are no phones connected. If it's not there the automated exchange test equipment will flag it as faulty. 3) The jelly in crimps is petroleum jelly. 4) The filters work the other way round to that which you state. The ADSL/VDSL modem is connected directly to the line, the voice/phone connection is filtered. You can clearly see this on the PCB of the Sky filter. 5) The Sky filter needs only the two line connections as it has its own bell/ring capacitor - the big red/brown one - after the voice filter and you can [see] its connection to the voice/phone socket. A phone connected to it will ring as normal. Many phones have a two-wire connection and don't use the master socket/NTE bell wire. 6) I'm afraid you've got it wrong about extensions with a filtered NTE. Because of the filter on the voice/phone connection any extension wiring causes no problems with the ADSL/VDSL side. Here there's a filtered NTE. The unfiltered ADSL/VDSL connection goes off to the remote modem via some 2-pair Cat5 (BT spec) and the filtered voice connection goes off to multiple sockets around the house with no effect on the VDSL side.

[@Graham_Langley]

Twelve hours later and no corrections - that's encouraging 8-)

[@g0fvt]

Graham, I found your contribution interesting, I had not dissected a faceplate so assumed the VDSL port was high pass filtered and the phone circuit low pass filtered, I have learnt something! FWIW I put a common mode choke in the VDSL cable and it seemed to gain me about 0.5dB of noise margin....

[@Graham_Langley]

@@g0fvt I've got a spare last-generation NTE filter faceplate here somewhere that I could pull apart for 100% confirmation. As for the CM choke and 0.5dB noise margin gain, what download speed increase did that give, assuming you're not on one of the services like PlusNet where the speed is capped to 40/80Mbps instead of being limited by the noise margin.

[@NeneExists]

@@Graham_Langley the maximum speed available from the VDSL DSLAMs used by openreach is 80Mbps downstream sync, but if you pay less the equipment can be set on a profile to limit the sync speed to 40 Mbps. If you're really lucky you really can get the full 80 Mbps. By the way, the gel crimps now seem to have silicone based goo instead of petroleum.

[@g0fvt]

Graham Langley, sadly I could not get any speed increase, the noise margin is still not much above 6dB. Currently my wife pays the utility bills and I am not sure which package we are on, I suspect we have hit the 40Mb/S ceiling.

[@Equiluxe1]

Before it was BT it was the General Post office,they owned all the line including any inside your house and they had the right to enter your house at any time to inspect any apparatus connected and the wiring. Most phones were hard wired but there was also quarter inch phono sockets if you wanted to be able to move the one instrument allowed around the house.

[@stevecraft00]

My grandmas new bungalow has a master socket with gpo on it.

[@Mark1024MAK]

Steve Craft - Back when it was the GPO, the ringing capacitor was typically in one of the phones. Then all the bells in the phones were wired in series.

[@Blade-420]

same here in the US when Bell telephone ran things. you had to use THEIR phones, and if you messed with the wiring, and it caused a problem down the line you could be fined. SO glad those days are over 😅

[@Puckoon2002]

I always have at least one corded phone, cordless phones won"t work if there is a power failure in your area, the cordless base unit will stop working but the corded phone is powered from the exchange.

[@Graham_Langley]

Agreed. you should always have a simple wired phone in the house somewhere. The one here is by the bed and not fixed to the wall - someone I knew had a stroke during the night, fell out of bed and couldn't reach the wall-mounted phone...

[@pingumcping]

Just use your mobile like a normal person...

[@dlarge6502]

@@pingumcping I got rid of my mobile years ago. Much better lifestyle now.

[@mistermartin82]

I'm pretty sure the explanation for the ASDL filter at 25:00 is wrong. The ADSL signal isn't filtered (its just a straight tap), the phone part is filtered to filter the high frequencies out (allowing low frequency to pass). The reason being is that the phones predate ADSL and are unpredictable in how they will react(often producing interference), the ADSL modem on other hand expects the phone signal and deals with it no problem

[@Graham_Langley]

Agreed. A lot of modern phones have a common-mode choke on the line connection, presumably to help prevent problems with ADSL/VDSL signals on an unfiltered line.

[@g0fvt]

@@Graham_Langley I agreed with your previous point, however the common mode chokes are mostly to deal with RF line imbalance, this reduces the interference to radio from the line and also the lines vulnerability to radio transmissions. Re-reading your post I agree, damn I hate it when that happens :-)

[@Graham_Langley]

@@g0fvt And now I look at my post I realise wasn't thinking clearly about this. I'll have to dig out the circuit I was trying to recall - I used the line filter components from scrap phone for a line audio monitor I needed a few years back.

[@Graham_Langley]

John, there's no disgrace in admitting you got it wrong about the filtering and a phone connected to the Sky filter not ringing.

[@paulgrimshaw6301]

Even on the example DSL filter circuit board you can clearly see that the modem connection is wired straight through to the incoming line. The filtering is between phone and line, to prevent the phone interfering with DSL and vice-versa. That's why you require a filter on every phone sharing the line (or multiple phone sockets sharing a master filter), and conversely a socket with just the modem connected doesn't need a filter at all. The reason most filters have a modem socket as well is (a) to avoid you needing a separate line splitter where you want both phone and modem on the same socket, and (b) to allow you to use an RJ11 connector for your modem instead of using an RJ11 to BT adaptor cable.

[@garybrownlee6537]

Looks like you drew an "exchange only" line. Most folks have at least one cab between them and the exchange. There will normally be a bunch of pairs between each so there is some redundancy incase one pair goes bad, each join also causes issues with reflections etc.

[@GrahamDenison]

Gary Brownlee as you say nearly all lines come via a “street box”, these can contain the modems in the case of FTTC lines, line boosters and all sorts of monitoring kit (for line loop back tests etc)

[@QUIX4U]

Ahah - so ? At 20:42 you bring into view a delightful weird set of "pliers".. jaws ground in a way that allows the finished jelly crimp - to be set hard down, without squashing the connector itself. Great - except for this. Not that many people have access to purchasing one of those, whereas almost everyone has numerous "spare" general purpose pliers. I can see myself rummaging around for my oldest (still usable) set and actually bench grinding the jaws to get the same "shape" of not together "jaw set" - to allow me to have a cheapish jelly connector crimper.

[@Danechip]

Another one JW. Pin 3 is needed to be connected on the other extensions for that bell to ring. Since if you have a broadband in use, you need to use microfilters on any other phones used on those extensions. Those extensions do not need a pin 3 connection as the microfilter will take care of this. Pin 3 will LOWER the data speed if still connected tests have proven. I could only get 368 ish of my 512 until I cut this link. (512k people, back in 2000) .

[@wwsxa39]

Later NTE5s had a bell wire filter fitted to the extension plate so that the bell wire didn't need to be connected.

[@AndyK.1]

Dear John! The internet router is connected directly to the external line. It’s the phone sockets which are filtered to stop voice interference with the data.

[@peterhurst]

Sometimes, but the better filters isolate both. Some early modems had problems with some cheap telephones generating hf noise affecting the signal

[@Danechip]

Uhm, No it is not. Never has and never will be unless A. You hard wire it yourself. B. You have Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Think lightning strikes Dear Andy.. Just sayin'

[@peterhurst]

@@Danechip tbf it can be and I've seen it done but its not good or normal as you say

[@AndyK.1]

Lightning strikes. You replace router. Suppressor unlikely to protect against all strikes anyway.

[@peterhurst]

@@AndyK.1 from what I recall it was originally in there as a replacement for the one in the 706

[@peteb2]

Hailing from New Zealand we for many years had the system virtually identical to that in the UK for telephone domestic installation. The advent of various ISP services in the last decade saw many changes culminating in an option for Fibre connection at the home. An Optical Network Terminal (ONT) is installed which is mains powered converting Fibre to copper in the home. You are then obliged to lose your old copper telt setup & rely on the Fibre. The only problem is that the instant mains power fails you have no landline telephone as the ONT has no power supply backup. Too bad in an emergency, the belief being your mobile phone will always work!

[@wwsxa39]

Most new new build estates are now only provided with a fibre connection requiring an powered ONT. These initially had a battery backup unit connected to provide a brief period of phone connection during a power outage. Lately the battery backup is not being provided as most telephones require power to actually work so will not work during a power outage anyway.

[@dlarge6502]

@@wwsxa39 thats their convenient excuse

[@richardrundle]

Hi john can i convert my extension socket to become my master socket as my vdsl modem needs to be in a central cupboard

[@jwflame]

Yes, it's extending the two A&B wires from the original to the new location. Original master should be removed/relocated, as you should only have one master socket connected.

[@Aaron-jk9zj]

Pretty similar to Australia but we don't have the third conductor. We have the cable coming straight in and star-wired from either the first socket, up in the ceiling space located at the furthest point from the man-hole, or a combination of the two, which makes ADSL and especially VDSL run poorly from signal reflections and stuff, and you have low-pass filters on every phone. But most places that are done correctly have a central filter outside in a junction box on the side of the house where there's also lightning protection going from both tip/earth and ring/earth and two pairs (Cat5e) going inside the house, one for XDSL (going to only one socket) and the other for phone which can just be star-wired no worries.

[@123mikeyd321]

Excellent simple explanation, especially about the ring conductor and the second pair. If could make one comment though, and it's really insignificant. The old-school microfilters (like the sky one) are low pass to block high frequencies. Sorry for being a nerd but at 24:35 I was getting worried but the diagrams all made sense. As you no doubt know, (and I know it's not a filter tutorial so again, sorry but I can't help myself) ADSL routers (AKA Modems) always have a high pass filter at the front end anyway.

[@PaulSteMarie]

Interesting. The UK "master socket" looks equivalent to what we call "demarcs" in the US. The old four wire cable in the US is red/green/black/yellow, red/green is the primary line, black/yellow the secondary. More modern wiring uses the structured color code which handles up to 25 pairs. Your two pair matches the first two pairs. The pair themselves are called ring & tip, which dates back to old switchboards. US ring voltage is typically 90V square wave and isn't broken out to a separate line.

[@imark7777777]

I've heard 90 volt sine wave but other areas might have been different. The separate ring line was I believe to move the bells off the phone and make the phone lighter and the bells would get mounted to the wall optionally with a switch another historical fact. Fascinated with phones in the US I ran out of things to research in the US and moved on to foreign phone systems.

[@Mark1024MAK]

In the U.K., the separation out of the bell / ringer line was (1) so that the telephones did not need a ringing capacitor (2) to limit the ringing current and (3) to simplify the wiring when more than one socket / phone was in use. The earlier method if you had more than one phone (but same line) was to have fixed connections (no sockets and plugs), one phone had the ringing capacitor connected, then the bells in all the extension phones were wired in series.

[@brianleeper5737]

The old four wire cable in the US was only ever intended for exposed installations on baseboards. It was never intended to be used for in-wall pre-wiring, but that is what it ended up being used for. Pre-wiring installed by Bell would have been either 3-pair or 6-pair, but after the breakup of Bell, pre-wiring was done by electricians who didn't know any better and used the wrong type of cable. This despite the correct paired wire being available at the same supply house where they likely bought the incorrect cable.

[@Mark1024MAK]

Reading back my earlier comment about the U.K. telephone wiring, I should say that four wire is only generally used within buildings. The line from the overhead pole is one pair/two core drop wire (that uses steel wire) or one quad/two pair/four core external cable if it is a burred/underground route. And I did not mention the fourth reason that the bell/ringing signal was separated out, it is less relevant these days with dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling (dialling), but when BT introduced this system, loop disconnect signalling (dialling) was still common. This could cause bell tinkle on the other telephone(s) if there was more than one telephone and more than one “master” socket (will bell/ringing capacitor) connected to the same line.

[@protectiongeek]

Interesting video as usual, John - thank you. Was amused to see that you use the 'jellies' for cable jointing. I stopped using these years ago in Scottish Power for network protection pilot cables (7pr, 12pr, 19pr, 27pr, 37pr, etc) as we found them to be VERY unreliable.We still used good old-fashioned 'twist-and-tip' using soldering of cores and then wrapping each soldered joint in VR sheeting to insulate it. It was/is my understanding that BT/Openreach stopped using these jelly crimps many years ago but I could be wrong about that!

[@Rosscoff2000]

You're wrong about the extension wiring of a filtered socket. The socket has 2,3,5 terminals that have passed through the filter so the extension wiring has no detrimental effect. For some years the better ones also have low pass filtering to terminal 3 so the bell wiring has no significant effect. Also there are A and B terminals that do provide a direct line connection if required for some reason (typically for alarms). Modern NTEs also use clamp down connectors that don't need the punch down tool.

[@BrianG61UK]

You mean "You're wrong". The extra bell wire can have some detrimental effect since it makes the wiring a little asymmetric so that one side may pick up extra interference or have extra capacitance to earth.

[@AndyK.1]

Virgin have given up transmitting phone signals over twisted pair on recent installs. The phone connection comes out the router. VOIP. Of course this don’t work when there is a power cut. If you don’t have a mobile they will provide you a free box which works during a power cut.

[@cjmillsnun]

Glad I have my older VM line on a System X exchange for now, although that said I have the router connencted to a UPS

[@zyborg47]

Openreach, made to look like a separate company, but still owned by Bloated Toad (British Telecom) . A total and complete waste of space.

[@6A8G]

Thank you so much for explaining this - I could never get my head around how/why the ringer terminal was derived. The primary/secondary sockets are the same in NZ:)

[@itsthesteganthat]

The people that downvote these videos must hit that button by accident. Brilliant as always JW!

[@lelandclayton5462]

Here in the states we don't have POTs lines anymore, it's all VoIP and Cellular. The old Analog was Christmas Trees and Bumble Bees (Line 1 Red/Green and Line 2 Black/Yellow). Now we use Cat 5e or higher with the Blue and Orange Pairs. Kinda miss the old Analog systems.

[@patrickwigmore3462]

What a charming mnemonic!

[@imark7777777]

You must be one of those lucky people in a city out on the other side of the states there's still a lot of copper. At least until Frontier loses all their customers to Comcast going from pots and DSL to coax cable and VOIP.

[@shilks8773]

Why did BT go and design such a large and ugly looking NTE5c terminating box. I think they could have so easily designed a smaller unit that would have fitted into a standard UK recessed metal box recessed into the wall. Would then be flush fitting and much neater.

[@wwsxa39]

The standard NTE5c has to stick out a bit to allow the customer to disconnect their extension wiring to diagnose whether a fault is internal or external. I agree that the curved design doesn't exactly fit in with the decor of most houses, and the ugly large lettering on the top is not necessary.

[@AndyK.1]

They certainly stick out a lot with the filter plates !

[@shilks8773]

@@wwsxa39 Could have easily been designed to allow to fit a 35mm recessed back box (Electrical type) to allow the face plate to fit flush with the wall. Lack of design thought in my opinion.

[@dlarge6502]

Simple. You have a phone being installed. Do you, as the customer, was the BT guy to cut a massive hole into your wall, ruining the wallpaper, being there for hours? Or would you rather they just screw a box to the wall hear the floor and simply drill a single hole to the outside?

[@QUIX4U]

6:55 Mainly because you couldn't "use" a YELLOW HIGHLIGHTER instead of white ? Yeah ..

[@jwflame]

Yellow isn't white and highlighters are not pens.

[@Danechip]

I'm sorry, I am loving this video JW. I was pausing the video to comment on what has been posted and my own comments on the video. I did not watch it until the end before answering other comments. Lesson learned. Jelly 'tots' as we called them, I would bite them down lol.

[@QUIX4U]

11:42 So - all one would (technically) need to do, if one has an older 3-wire phone and it doesn't wish to "ring" on an incoming call, a simple "fix" would just be to add the 470k ohm resistor & 1.8uF cap inside the 3 wire phone itself (& use just the 2 wire jack-point as a 2 wire as normal)? I'm having a weird problem in that a month ago at 1o past 5 of a Tuesday - our speaker phone telephone started playing up by NOT disconnecting from the incoming line when the handset was replaced, instead tries to automatically HOLD the speakerphone handsfree function on ? (possibly caused outside the installation as the tech who has NOW been here twice to fix it, eventually totally disconnected the installation (at the barge board entry box) - from all outside services yet still had MAINS HUM on the overhead VDSL/PHONE line that comes down the street... yet guess who said it isn't his fault to fix) So - I have a distinct impression, what with the mains power company doing pole replacements in our entire town, that some "IdJit" may have "lost" an overhead mains line whilst reconnecting - allowing it to "spring-back" & somehow loop itself over an aerial telephone wire, which - when he pulled it back to his mains pole, may well have formed a potential "induction loop" around the overhead telephone wires, causing our extremely bad mains hum, static and false ringing/tinkling sounds & the non-disconnecting "hands free" speakerphone relay problems. So - without going all the way down the street to the exchange box itself, I have no way to "sight test" (up the poles) nor electrically test at any point - our "street running" overhead telephone poles & overhead wiring bundles I am thus thinking, that as some phones FULLY WORK (no hum/static) and others don't - while some others don't RING on the usual main 2 wired master plug-in box, yet will ring on another (maybe a slave) 2 wired plug-in box - located in a distant room ? I may have to fully rewire ALL of the internal wiring that NZ Telecom installed over the years - specifically for the three cable runs to different wall plate outlet boxes, as the one dual outlet (broadband & telephone/fax) at the VDSL outlet that Telecom NZ installed some years ago (in the center of the house) - is a dual outlet box, which is giving us the biggest headache. I'm assuming that maybe the dual outlet BROADBAND / TELEPHONE jack itself, has faulted (maybe - or maybe not - as who cares at this stage), as that was the very last installed box with a separate cable (run from the overhead incoming line connection box up on the barge board outside), over the past 20 years or so. IF - I do this, I will work backwards by piggybacking circuits off the most distant telephone only jack points, and rewiring everything from them - leaving the broadband's dual telephone / internet outlet - as simply an internet one - supplied directly from the outside fitted VDSL master filter.. If that works, I'll know that maybe the fault has occurred inside the exterior line box, where TELECOM FITTED their VDSL/Telephone incoming master filter - or is still far far away - somewhere along the street run overhead copper network ? If it doesn't work - at least I know that it has to be completely OFF SITE, as all other jack-points located in here, have been working fine as 2 wired - for around ten years now. What has me a little worried though is this, is it our master LIGHTENING ARRESTOR (inside the so-called master jack points, which are ALL of the 2 wired type, no master slave jack anywhere in the installation (which has failed), or is it the one down in their own pillbox, at their local exchange?

[@daftgingercat]

Can anyone help? I have an old NTL phone line now Virgin media. This is for phone only. Broadband is on a separate cable. I have 3 pairs of wires. Blue/ White, orange /White, Green/ white. 6 wires in total. I have a master box with test socket. Think it is NTE5. Blue white is connected to terminal B, White blue to terminal A. NO other wires are connected. I recently removed extension wires as I no longer need the extension. Phone is now not working. Sometimes rings, sometimes engaged. sometimes nothing no ring tone. Can any one give me some advice.

[@jwflame]

For the incoming line, only two wires are required. Poor or loose connections could cause the problems described. If both wires are connected properly and a phone still doesn't work when that's the only thing plugged in to the test socket, you will need to contact Virgin Media as the problem will be elsewhere.

[@daftgingercat]

Thank you John.

[@video99couk]

3:47 "Contact Virgin Media in the case of something going wrong". Erm, what can I say, and be polite? Let's say that attempting to do so might be a somewhat frustrating experience.

[@SeanBZA]

There are worse operators.

[@burgersnchips]

SeanBZA Quick, nobody mention Vodafone

[@Danechip]

@@burgersnchips or 3 mobile. High speed connections, until you get to the border. Then, it's a slow boat to India (via china of course) to get a reply. I have waited over an hour often...

[@jaycee1980]

Try being with ADSL back when BT first allowed other providers. Line faults would turn into a customer service argument of "It's BT" -> "It's your provider" -> "It's BT" ad infinitum (and most of the time it WAS BT's fault.

[@burgersnchips]

Peter Mulholland We have this problem still at work Somebody higher up decided it was a good idea to have BT Broadband on a Vodafone line. Can't get anything fixed because Openreach when employed by Vodafone will say the line is fine, but Openreach when employed by BT will say the line is noisy. So BT refuse to replace the router and Vodafone refuse to fix the noisy line... Whichever one it actually is??

[@gordonbuttle272]

Surprised this stuff is still relevant in the UK!! Is it not about time you dragged your telephone systems into the 21st Century. I'm from New Zealand, here the vast majority of people just use mobiles and don't have "landlines". Also the vast majority of people now have fiber to the Home connections and if they do want a "landline" they plug their home phone sockets into the Optical Network Terminal. It appears the UK is still in the dark ages with VDSL and Broadband over copper wiring?? Do you not have Fiber to the Home over there?

[@jwflame]

Fibre to the home / premises is available but only in a very small number of areas. For most everyone else, it is fibre to a cabinet in the street, then copper wires to the premises. About 5% of places can't even get that, and have to make do with basic ADSL on copper from the exchange - and those places are not in isolated rural areas, they can be anywhere, basically where Openreach (previously British Telecom) haven't installed the cabinets. Broadband can be purchased from a wide range of suppliers, but they all use the same Openreach infrastructure, so if you live in an area with no street cabinets, it doesn't matter who you buy it from - it all relies on the same old copper wiring. Many people do not want or use landlines, but there is no option in most cases - broadband over copper is supplied with a landline as part of the price, and the only other option is to pay for a 'copper pair' which is the same price as a landline except you get no phone service on it, so no one bothers with that and may ISPs don't have it as an option anyway. There are several other companies which provide fibre to the premises using their own network, but they only cover small areas in certain places.

[@dlarge6502]

I have no idea how people put up being without a landline. I mean you'd have to give your mobile number to businesses!! ;) Fibre to the premises can be a very difficult thing to arrange. Firstly you need the fibre from the cabinet to the pole, then the engineer has to route it into your property which is a hassle. Unless you are on Virgin Media as they are a cable TV company so you get fibre or cable anyway, along with a standard phone line. The rest of the system if fully digital now but just the "last leg" is copper, which is fine as copper can easily handle multiple gigabit connections if done right, which it rarely is! Eventually the phones will be moved onto a voip service with all its inherent problems but that is not happening too quickly as BT have finally been told they must upgrade more of the network first, especially the copper only connections to remote areas

[@28YorkshireRose12]

Quick and dirty ringback test if 17070 doesn't work in your area - dial 123, wait for the speaking clock (At the third stroke, the time from BT will be. . . . . . ), press 'R' and wait for the dial tone, then replace the handset - if you have access to the speaking clock, you should also be able to get an automatic ringback. When the phone rings, pick up the handset, hear the voice, then replace the handset.

[@wrdcc01]

John, great work as always, may I add that the incoming cable (standard drop wire or lead in has 2 pairs, green/black and orange/blue. Green black are spares or line 2 and blue orange are the primary a and b to the NTP (Network Termination Point) or internal point. White/blue and solid blue then become the a and b internally on terminals 2 and 5 of all the sockets. Orange is used for the bell balance wire (term 3) if required and the greens are used for earth, old hat earth recall to summon operator, pull dial tone (earth loop recall), hold line or to activate Star Services. Regards Dean

[@timbo19]

small correction - the incoming drop wire has green/black and orange/white, not blue.

[@frasercurrie7267]

Very informative. Also your voice helped put my child to sleep so thanks for that.

[@drivewasher]

John, Iv'e just had a Virgin Media telephone installed. They now only provide VOIP phone lines via a modem/router. Engineer said ALL new installs are VOIP and some of the origonal wired ones are being replaced with VOIP area by area as soon as they can

[@imark7777777]

LOL that was one of the original modes of DSL which never came to play along with TV but they couldn't get the marketing around it in the US. The ideas was that they would send you a digital circuit and then you would have a box that would break out the signals essentially and everything would communicate digitally over the backbone. Edit another words there a bit late to the party. That must be one of those fancy fiber areas that he was talking about where it's not actually fiber although it does ease the client-side set up for later bringing fiber.

[@dlarge6502]

@@imark7777777 is a Virgin Media line. They are a mix of optical cable or coax cable, mostly coax cable. Most of the video is talking about the old copper lines that BT have, much bigger network but the VM network beats it for speed and capacity being fibre/cable

[@stephenlounds1385]

Had problems when I moved into my current home as the internal wiring was/is aluminium and that stopped my broadband working. Made up a slave box to connect my telephones through a micro filter plugged into the master socket, modem also plugged into micro filter. Result is only one filter in use, good telephone service good internet.

[@Graham_Langley]

External aluminium cabling installed some years back is causing all kind of problems. With internal wiring, look out for and avoid CCS or Copper Clad Steel cable - it makes for poor IDC connections. [Edit] Ditto CCA - Copper Clad Aluminium - cable.

[@_Steven_S]

@@Graham_Langley Especially when the sub-contracted "fiber broadband" installer jelly crimps extension wiring together to save time on the data extension install.

[@imark7777777]

Copper clad in other forms of non copper wiring is also a problem with CAT5 X cable from cheaper sources

[@Graham_Langley]

@@imark7777777 CCA - Copper Clad Aluminium - and is usually described as something like "Economy C5 network cable" as it doesn't comply with the Cat5 standard, along with "Not recommended for POE" as the resistance is higher than copper.

[@henrytwigger2245]

John, some years ago, maybe 1995ish, I installed a wider door frame in my rowing club in Nottingham. Cut through the plasterboard and studded wall with a saw, and cut through a mains cable without knowing it, which caused a leak to earth but didn't blow the fuse. The TT earth connection to the water pipes had been compromised by a new plastic incoming main. So the buildings earth protection was disconnected, so all the plumbing was live. The men were getting an invigorating buzz in the showers. But more topically, the line card in the local telephone exchange building caught fire, as the telephone line provided the only earth path for the building. Luckily the engineer in charge of the exchange was a club member ! The question is which leg of the telephone circuit is earthed ? dose it matter ? And is it still earthed ?

[@TheChipmunk2008]

The a wire is normally the one at earth potential

[@SeanBZA]

Normally yes A wire is grounded, and B is -48V, to reduce corrosion. The phone itself must have been connected somehow to the mains, probably via a fax machine, as the suppressor clamps in there will tend to operate at around 90VAC, clamping the line to the local mains ground. Funny that the line card caught fire, they typically just fail open circuit as the input fusible resistors burn open, but could have caused some arcing in the input line filters as well.

[@henrytwigger2245]

One line was intentionally connected to the buildings earth. And I've seen it in other older buildings too. Not in more modern buildings though, it seems to be isolated.

[@TheChipmunk2008]

@@henrytwigger2245 that was only normal on payphone or party lines... Terminal 4 of the line Jack is actually designated as local earth

[@jaycee1980]

This is exactly why it is NOT allowed to use the main water pipe as an earth electrode - though it was very commonly done in the past

[@JohnnyMotel99]

I love the way you keep saying, not "supposed" to be moved.

[@TheStevenWhiting]

Had to unplug cable 3 on ours some years ago. People told me it was the "bell" wire. Internet got better after unplugging.

[@actorzone856]

I worked in the telecommunications industry in Australia we have come a long way in a short time, now we have the NBN, I have Optic Fibre to the my home, copper network is still used in the country but they are still upgrading that network, optic fibre solved lots of technical problems and maintenance,

[@dexwhitmore]

@JW - Can we get a tear down of a linemans handset? I imagine they're not much different to a standard handset, save for having preprogrammed numbers like 17070 etc?

[@banjax66]

John Ward, you said "Virgin Media"... VM customers like myself, know it as "Vermin Media" . :)

[@banjax66]

@R-77 The internet speed is good and the serivce is good... But if the service goes down, it takes the engineers 6 months or more to sort the problem out.

[@banjax66]

@Chris Seal That particular fault (intermittent serivce) affected 400+ customers over an 18 month period. The cause was eventually tracked down to a faulty underground cable. Once found, Virgin engineers took around 6 months to fix it. But to be fair to Virgin, it was a major task.

[@BrianG61UK]

@@banjax66 I have heard they can send sometimes send out engineers dozens of times who each do the same totally useless thing and then say they can't fix it and someone more qualified will have to do it. Also it seems that if you're not careful with your GDPR options they will nag and nag at you to try and get you to buy extra services.

[@YouTubeSupportTeams]

a good engineer can track a fault down the same day or on a repeat visit. we have lots of tools to find out what is causing the fault. your situation is unique and we go above and beyond to keep people connected. an intermittent fault is the hardest to trace though as when it is working there is essentially no fault but even then we can usually find out fairly quickly from experience what might be causing it.

[@marklittler784]

😄🤸😄🤸😄🤸😄🤸😄 Personally I like the way at least they answer their phone 😄😅😄😅

[@katerussell3680]

Anyone able to explain NTTP to me? I worked in telecoms 7 years ago but not since, just hoping to go into a new postion and having a discussion with a friend (working telecoms currently)who said NTTP means there's an alarm on the line. It didn't sit right with me but I have no idea why...maybe some distant memory. Help would be really appreciated

[@millomweb]

You mention Virgin - but what about Hull (Kingston-upon) Gawd - 'Kingston Communications' even springs to mind. Did BT buy them out ? Oh good, you've now answered that question ;)

[@Mark1024MAK]

You’re be wanting him to chat about Mercury communications next!

[@james-5560]

Interesting, but because Virgin is in my area I haven't used a landline in 10 years. Even if I had one for internet I don't think I'd plug a phone in because all you get is fake Microsoft scammers andr recorded PPI messages every 20 minutes.

[@Danechip]

Virgin insist your have a landline with them or they charge you more for some reason. I wanted just the BB side of it but quoted a higher price. They may be independent of the copper networks, but who needs a landline. The only reason would be in an extended power cut and dead chargers or to charge (Cough!!) your mobile on. Landlines have massive power backups in the case of a massive power cut.

[@timballam3675]

@@Danechip ha ha ha VM phones are muxed down to the local cab then demuxed at that point, power cut and no phone..... BT run copper pairs from the exchange so you keep the phone line in a power cut....

[@Danechip]

@@timballam3675 hahaha back. Last I saw, your house goes out of the Onmi town your garden to the tee and in the pit to your DP in the street. From there several 40 pair to the mux (usually withing a mile) where you jumper the blue ones to the green ones (say pair 605) in your little blue and yellow jump wires). They have batteries in them and cooling. Honest. I saw one one on KZbin. Oh wait.... Perhaps you could show me a multiplexer in your home that 'muxes' all of your ONE channel to the DP in the road? VM's fibre is to the local mux. Massive lie to customers. From there is sent to the DP in copper. From there Siamese cable if you will. RG6, 7 or 11. Depends how far you are from your DP (Little green box on the corner of your street ) as how much signal you get from the coax) determined , usually by distance is what cable you use.

[@jaycee1980]

@@Danechip I have no phone line in my house, only Virgin Media internet, and Virgin do not charge me more. VM is what is called FTTN (Fibre to the Node). Bear in mind Virgin had this arrangement WAY BEFORE BT even thought of offering ANYONE decent broadband service. DOCSIS 3.0 is still a very effective last mile technology, so it's not worth the cost of installing FTTH yet. BT on the other hand, is FTTC and still uses VDSL as the last mile, which is almost as crappy as ADSL was.

[@tomkennaugh]

@@jaycee1980 FTTN and FTTC are essentially the same, in this case exactly the same. The "last mile" of copper is the same distance for VM and Openreach. The advantage VM have is the physical layer, they have coax to the premises rather than Openreach's often untwisted pair. I agree that DOCSIS 3.0 is an effective technology and has more lasting power than VDSL. VM are not however unviersal coverage and are unlikely to lay much new cable anytime soon, so if you're in an uncabled area you're stuck with Openreach VDSL/ADSL whether you are with VM or not.

[@IC225]

makes me laugh over all this 'fiber' adverts as its usless lol. as said in this video the only time you get actual 'fiber' is from the socket in house to modem/router or green (typically at end of street) box to house socket....rest of time its normal old copper what is NOT fiber...so dont be fooled into paying for and thinking you actually get 'high speed fiber bradband'...as you clearly dont...its a sales gimmic, basically a canal boat at 5mph will be faster lol.

[@wwsxa39]

A fibre connection will provide a BB download speed of 300mbs if you are willing to pay for that speed. Most properties currently don't have a fibre connection and are restricted to having a FTTC connection (fibre to the cabinet and copper between the cabinet and property). This will change in the future as Openreach are currently running fibre connections in quite a few cities, and supplying fibre connections to villages that are too far away from a cabinet to get a FTTC connection.

[@Graham_Langley]

Virgin Media started it, even though at the time only the backbone was fibre, anything else was co-ax. BT's FTTC is more 'fibre' than VM.

[@IC225]

@@wwsxa39 even if you pay top wack rates they dont give you the specified rating of speed as promised, louis rossmann has been a bit pissed a few times at the speeds and hes paid business rates for a specified speed..i dont thin it was fiber though...not to that place, but still they throttle your speeds. even if you had fiber in parts, wouldnt it just hit the buffers when it gets to the copper bits due to change in material ?. i know that all our phonelines (main feed station to telegraph pole outside homes) in this area (my home town and surrounding areas) are all copper and most folk would get out of fiber is a not much 'boost' from cabinate to home or socket to router. and those that i know that claim they have 'fiber' are sayings its no better than normal copper speeds even though they paid a little extra for fiber. i was having a word with a guy that was fitting up a new metal pole as oppsed to a wooden one that was directly outside our house, and even he said fiber isnt worth paying for as you dont get that much from it and like the 'promised advertised speeds' are more of sales gimmic rather than fully working beneficial thing.

[@IC225]

@@Graham_Langley non of that FTTC round here, we're to get 5g though lol but no sign of true fiber apart from cabinate to house. im skeptical on just how much fiber is claimed to have been put out as FTTC as so far all ive found out as majority of the network is all still copper (part from the odd cabinate to home wiring), most cabling has not been upgraded since it was first installed....however its been maintained like but never really upgraded to fiber.

[@Graham_Langley]

FTTC is exactly what it says - Fibre To The Cabinet. Unlike ADSL where the BB is carried on the copper line all the way from exchange to premises, the faster VDSL carries the all the BB stuff on fibre optic connections from exchange to new green cabinets next to the older voice-only ones. As I understand it a subscriber line passes through the new cabinet where a bit of kit adds the VDSL signal onto it, so only the last bit of copper carries the BB. Next stage will be FTTP or Fibre To The Premises - fibre all they way with no copper. FWIW when I ordered VDSL (BT Infinity) I used a wheel-on-a-stick to measure the length of cable between this place and the cabinet then plugged it into an online calculator. The speed it came back with was pretty close to what I got.

[@Fendermanpaul]

I want to relocate my router elsewhere not at the master socket. Should I run a slave telephone wire, 2 wires 2 & 5 to the telephone extension terminals in the master, then off to the slave extension with an adsl filter at the slave? Or do I run the filtered output from the master to the slave socket thus avoiding the filter need at the slave? Of course I then wouldn't use a telephone at the slave but, how to plug my router into the slave socket without a filter. Hope that makes sense. Also, which connections are the filtered master wires in the master socket?

[@marklittler784]

Really gets confusing nowadays with comments some are on "Top" and all on "Newest" on KZbin the great disappearing comments syndrome 😅😄😅😄

[@jakemcintyre4820]

Now I know why all of my older phones don't ring in certain rooms, I think the ring wire has come lose somewhere, as in sone rooms the modern phones will ring but not the old ones.

[@kenbloom8901]

all i wanted was which numbers to connect red,green,black and yellow wires to .sorry but i am not a bt engineer,did not need 95% of information, must of been very helpful to those who understand it,I'm now trying to find a simple explanation, should take no more than a minute which numbers match up with which colours.

[@jwflame]

Those colours are not used in the UK, so unsurprisingly this video does not cover them.

[@JayAP2024]

virgin are very good at fixing faults, however the fact they have now opted to connect the landline through the broadband router for new installations is a right pain in the arse, its crap and 2/3 calls are dropped, if you call them up to repair the issue they get it done very quickly but it only lasts a few days then its back to crap again, shame as the broadband in my opinion is the best around, albeit for my area.

[@denisohbrien]

in the last 3 years virgin wired my house and buisness, both got dedicated phone wiring along with the coax for the tvbox/internet. if that has changed thats a shame, but likely it has not for buisness, and who uses a landline at home these days, we only have one cause it was part of the package. interesting to know though, as there routers are crap and in both instances I have put in modem mode and installed my own. (whole can of worms for a buisness with fixed ip)

[@millomweb]

@@denisohbrien We have a landline at home. We tried connecting comms to the leccy company's wires but it didn't work - so we have to use landline.

[@JayAP2024]

We only use the landline because we cannot get a mobile signal at home, my missus is switching to the 02 network when her conny is up coz thats the only network that gets a signal around here. When we started having issues with the landline it was about a month after we moved in, we actually moved within the same road but to the opposite end where the ground is much lower and thick tree coverage all around, even sky tv cannot pick up a signal here (so im told). The 1st engineer to visit us to sort the landline told us that virgin are only providing this connection type to new installations and are not installing phone lines at all now, only maintaining existing ones, as this house had no existing virgin installation we got this shower of shit, put it this way, its so crap that when i call the house from my mobile, i call then hang up straight away and then call again because i KNOW the 1st call will defo drop, calling out usually seems fine, its just incomming, and yes, the routers/hubs are pants, the signal is good but very short so i have 2 range extenders upstairs, but range extenders drop alot of speed, theyre ok for mobile connections but i had to run a cable for my boys xbox as the speed dropped so dramatically it made gaming near on impossible (1st world problems i know) but at the end of the day, im expected to pay for the so called "landline" which techically isnt a landline at all now.

[@neilcaldwell870]

Also, on my Virgin install, my modem is in a different room to the phone master socket. If I had to have the phone coming off the back of the router that wouldn't have suited. In a way though, it may have some advantages as technically it's VOIP isn't it?

[@tvenergyproductions1]

Thank you for an excellent and informative video. I bought a Kingfisher MKTEL-1(B) slave socket from Screwfix, but it has a resistor and surge protector in circuit which confused me as I thought slaves did not have any components. Do you think this will affect anything? I have a total of 3 slaves and a master.

[@jwflame]

Slaves have no components, you have been given the wrong item. However just cut those components out, it will then be a slave. It might work with 2x masters but it's likely to result in problems.

[@goldenboy5500]

we don't have those kind of telephone lines anymore, it's all VOIP, Voice over internet protocol most people just have cell phones

[@meosalami5180]

Does anybody know what that gel stuff in the connectors actually is? It can't be vaseline or silicone grease as AFAIK these both can absorb a lot of water, which would be counter-productive ...

[@SeanBZA]

It is a kilopoise silicone grease, so that it stays put. Water repellant, and even though it does have a small amount of vapour transfer, the copper wire will only corrode slowly, as the joint is protected by the insulation, and the join itself is a very strong metal to metal bond. They will operate for decades sitting in salt water, which I have plenty of experience with, though in most cases the cable itself will have issues from water ingress ( especially paper insulated ones) long before that joint corrodes off the wire inside. Biggest problem is it gets everywhere, and is a very effective water repellant, which means if you have touched some, or an area where they were, you will find that you cannot remove it from your skin till you mechanically abrade the skin away. Makes painting near those junction boxes difficult, from all the incidental transfer that contaminated the walls. You basically have to sand down heavily, wash with solvent, then sand again and then paint, and hope there are no fish eyes looking back at you.

[@meosalami5180]

@@SeanBZA 😁👍 One of the nice thing about John's videos is that you'll find a lot of experience and knowledge in their vicinity.

[@Graham_Langley]

It always used to be petroleum jelly, AKA Vaseline.

[@lezbriddon]

I didn't think the ringing voltage was that high, I always thought it was like 50-70v, and that the surge suppressors were just common 90v neons, but thats from when I looked at phone wiring like 30 years ago and memory fades. wonder how my current ''box'' works as my phone line master socket is part of my modem that is gigabit fibreoptic to the house/desk and is 12v powered (with 4hr battery backup).

[@PaulSteMarie]

Chuckle! Clearly you never leaned on a 66 or 110 punch-down block and got nailed by ring voltage. It's quite jangly, for lack of a better word.

[@imark7777777]

If you actually have fiber optic cable running in which it sounds like because you have a battery backup unit the box is essentially a mini VoIP / exchange endpoint but usually held to higher standards because it's actually phone company equipment and has to be compatible more than your standard voice box. in the US the ring voltage is 90.

[@portman8909]

Will removing all the extensions and using a VDSL filter improve my broadband?

[@MauriceNL1]

Do you guys have bonding? Here in The Netherlands (not everywhere) you can get bonding vdsl, it's basically just 2 Vdsl lines connected together to achieve speeds up to 200mbit download and 60mbit upload

[@jwflame]

It's available from a few suppliers, but mainly sold for business use.

[@AndyK.1]

We don’t have enough vsdl ports at one per house!

[@1peter1180]

you can contact openreach directly i have done it when there was a problem with a telegraph pole outside my house

[@naimsaby9473]

Can you please explain house alarm wiring and where to in stall end of line resistor thanks love your videos

[@AndyK.1]

Some micro filters generate their own ring signal pin 3 which is why they don’t bother taking an input from pin 3

[@BrianG61UK]

Most if not all do.

[@JudithPhillips-w1y]

Someone playing with my socket I can hear the cracking when I am in my room most times

[@Falco45able]

Earth A battery B , from the battery in the switch, 😉

[@martinda7446]

PS. Congratulations on 100,000 subscribers. I only just noticed. Amazing.

[@PlasmaHH]

Rather interesting differences. Around here each house gets usually at least 4 or so twisted pair cables that terminate into one of these boxes where you need an LSA tool to connect your wires to. Also since we largely are forced to switch to VoIP DSL splitters are mostly a thing of the past.

[@wwsxa39]

BT are phasing out PSTN service and are planning to migrate to fibre optic service. This is going to take quite a while, so in the interim they are planning on closing the exchanges and providing VOIP service from the road side RDSLAM cabinets.

[@cdoublejj]

of course they have a different connector then the US, it's all thin and wide

[@lylewatts6370]

Very interesting and I always learn something new, as an electrical contractor in Canada we do have some things in common. Thanks for the informative video.

[@joynalmiah8864]

I wonder how much power you can get from the socket, i might try to charge a battery lol

[@jamespattenden605]

So what is the point of laying fibre cable, if they still use the old copper wire phone line into your house,? The copper wire into my flat must be over 20 years old and the wires to my master socket are joined via a block connector.

[@jwflame]

Fibre from the exchange to a street cabinet with copper to the premises is better than copper from the exchange to the premises. It's far cheaper to replace fibre to the cabinet compared to replacing all of the cables to each individual property. Fibre to the premises is being installed in the UK, but it's a slow process. As of July 2022 it's still under 20% of all premises.

[@Jackzuk]

I accidentally cut an alarm cable that goes from the alarm to a movement sensor, was these jelly crimps work to join them back together?

[@Graham_Langley]

No. Alarm cable has stranded conductors, jelly crimp IDC connectors are designed for solid conductors.

[@brianleeper5737]

@@Graham_Langley I've seen those 3M Scotchlok style connectors used for stranded connectors, I can't say I've ever seen a bad connection because of it.

[@charlesmilligan1416]

Don't suppose anyone could give me some support on an issue I have with my socket?

[@emmaglover6410]

Hi John john cut the telephone cable because I don’t use it no more cos I’m having new flooring do I need to earth the four cables ? Can they cause a fire I’ve just tucked them under the plinths

[@jwflame]

Unlikely as it's 50 volts with a very low current limit. Would be better to disconnect it where it enters the property.

[@iPhoneTaxa]

I’m having a few issues - I’m trying to extend my Adsl line to another socket in another room as I want to move my router. I run a cable from the micro filter to the wall socket that has been connected with the blue sockets on 3 and 4 to the other room where it has a clue socket 3 and 4. But the internet Isn’t very consistent any suggestions? The wall sockets are connected via cable 5 cables and the sockets to router are connected via usual 2 wire Adsl cable

[@jwflame]

To extend ADSL it's just the two wires from the master socket, which are 2 and 5. No other wires are required. 3 is only needed for very old telephones without internal ring circuits. 4 isn't used for anything.

[@mastergx1]

Once, when I was a younger spark, I did some work on a phone line and when I had finished, the dialtone from the telephone receiver was intermittent. About 1 second of tone and 1 second of silence, repeating. The phone worked perfectly well, ringing out and receiving but I still thought it was a bit odd. Is there any chance I simply reversed the 2 and 5 wires? Would that be a symptom? Otherwise, what else do you think may have caused it? Any feedback would be appreciated.

[@AndyK.1]

No

[@Mike_5]

Depends how long ago but intermittent dial tone is an indicator for a new voicemail message

[@mastergx1]

@@Mike_5 would have been 8-10 years ago now, that's cool if that was the case

[@GeoNeilUK]

@@mastergx1"would have been 8-10 years ago now, that's cool if that was the case" Then that would have been the case. Network provided voicemail has been a thing for a while now. I remember working as a headset jockey for BT about 20 years ago trying to sell it outbound.

[@RobertDaltonRobert]

I am wanting to replace my bt socket which has AB and 123 with new socket which is just 1-6. What wiring on the old socket would go to the new socket?

[@jwflame]

A&B are 2&5, but if you are replacing a socket with A&B and the new one doesn't have those, it's almost certainly the wrong socket.