BT Master phone socket (NTE5 Master Socket)

As new owners in the Crescent, we had a nightmare with BT to get a line connected. In fact from 27th March until 3rd of May. Broadband followed a week later, but the line speed is poor and erratic. It drops completely most evenings for a few hours. Briefly it appears that BT's database is not up to date for Poundbury, despite the last owner having a BT line and broadband! I am sure this is not new information to other owners!

Perhaps this is an issue for new builds, to prevent this sort of nonsense in the future. However on a more practical level, I am constantly asked by various BT people to check the Master socket. Although I am the owner of many fine brushed metal phone sockets (thank you Morrish builders) but it appears no one though to fit a master socket, so BT rightly cannot start the elimination process. My question is has anyone else been down this road, and is there a master socket lurking somewhere? In our last three houses, there has always been a master socket.  


 

BT Master socket saga.

Eventually a BT engineer was dispatched to the house,he seemed very competent and had experience of Poundbury. He checked all the sockets (7 fitted)and confirmed they were all extension sockets. In his experience none of the houses in the Crescent and others by the same builder had master sockets fitted originally. This was just cost cutting by the builders, as BT Openreach will not/cannot determine responsibility for faults without a correctly fitted master socket. He was aware of an intermittent fault on broadband which drops out in the evening, but he thought it had been fixed. We had already decided to go for BT Infinity,and the engineer said that the intermittent/evening issue will disappear with Infinity. In order to prepare for this and to improve our broadband he fitted a master socket in the middle floor (study/bedroom), opened up all the other sockets, cut out the capacitors and removed all the adsl filters (permanently). This process improved the broadband speed ,but not the drop out issue. However, a week later the Infinity engineer turned up and had the simple job of putting a new modem on the wall connected to the master socket and a new router on the desk. This could not have been done without a master socket.

BT would normally charge around £90.00 for rewiring and installation of a master socket. I am told that one of the builders believe the customer may not wish a master socket to be installed before purchase, as they may may wish to change the location....so they do not fit one. Fortunately the same logic is not applied to the fitting of a front door.

I wonder what is happening with new builds?

No master socket inevitably means hassle with the hardware contractor (mainly Openreach), probably poor performance with broadband and additional cost for the owner. As we had no phone for nearly 2 months courtesy of BT we were not charged for the master socket works, others may not be so lucky. I am sure there is a minimum telephony standard for new builds, and would question if this is checked. I would suggest the bill for fitting the "first" master socket should be routed back to the builder.