jonathanc Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 Just moved into a newly built property and getting bad internet speeds. Was told by tech support to plug into the master test socket but can't find one. Did some googling and found out in newer house there's no indoor master socket and only one outside and only for use by BT engineers? Is this true? http://community.bt.com/t5/Phones/Cannot-find-BT-master-socket-to-test-broadband/td-p/15179 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guigsy Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 Prety sure they just mean the one where the phone line comes into the house. Bottom line is find out how far away from the exchange you are. Think you can do it online. If your more than a few miles forget it and make the switch to virgin. We are right on 2 miles and lucky to get above 3 meg. Swapping to virgin soon. Most new estates have cable put in from day 1. Ours did and it's 15-20 years old now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 On new builds the Master Socket is generally the one on the outside of the building, which is also the demarcation point between your builidng cabling and the incoming BT service, so in otherwords, BT's responsibility ends at the Master socket on the front of your house. Hope that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted October 3, 2011 Author Share Posted October 3, 2011 On new builds the Master Socket is generally the one on the outside of the building, which is also the demarcation point between your builidng cabling and the incoming BT service, so in otherwords, BT's responsibility ends at the Master socket on the front of your house. Hope that helps. Ouch... kind of missed the old master socket there's virtually nothing I can do to test myself then... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted October 3, 2011 Author Share Posted October 3, 2011 Prety sure they just mean the one where the phone line comes into the house. Bottom line is find out how far away from the exchange you are. Think you can do it online. If your more than a few miles forget it and make the switch to virgin. We are right on 2 miles and lucky to get above 3 meg. Swapping to virgin soon. Most new estates have cable put in from day 1. Ours did and it's 15-20 years old now My nearest exchange is less than a mile as the crow flies (It takes 10 min to walk to it ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sideexitsupra Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 Go with Virgin if you can. Just switched and speeds have gone from 2mb to over 30mb and we are only on their mid package! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Ouch... kind of missed the old master socket there's virtually nothing I can do to test myself then... If you look in the box on the outside of your house house the master socket should be inside and the away leg to your building wiring connected either in the front via a BT style plug or possibly (unlikely) hardwired into the socket itself depending on who made the final connection. Can you get a long lead from your router/modem to reach directly to this socket? There has been a couple of different types of sockets used over the past few years so its hard for me to say without seeing it how your connection is configured. Open the flap and take a pic if you can. If the front plate of the socket has a horizontal join about half way up and two fixing screws on the bottom half, unscrew the plate and remove it and then you that will reveal another socket behind, use this to plug your router directly into and see how it performs then. If its still crap then give BT/Openreach a call, good luck if thats the case though! It may be that you just have a krone style strip inside the box, and just the blue/white pair from your house wiring is used in which case let me know and will try and talk you through how to test from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Konrad Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Another vote for Virgin, been with them and blueyonder before and during 7 years I had 2 connection disruption (area problems). It took them around 3 hours to sort it out. Service itself is nice, speeds are high and instalation takes them an hour maximum. You can take internet/phone packet and ditch BT for good with their charges. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonathanc Posted October 4, 2011 Author Share Posted October 4, 2011 Ok noob question here so please bear with me I don't think I will get much difference in speed with Virgin as I can't get their fibre service? So basically it will be ADSL which will come through the very same line but just through different provider? I chatted online with BT and was told I should be getting from 3.5-8 with estimated of 6mb. At first it all sounds good until I asked the question if I can cancel if I get a low speed (I can still cancel with SKY until end of month) but was told that if I get at least 3.5 I can't... so in theory I could end up with a worse speed/provider lol... oh well, I guess I should just be content with what I have now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guigsy Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Bottom line is it's the bt line that is the limiting factor. Sky,bt,plussnet, whoever might sell you a "up to 8 meg" service. But nobody can say "you will get more speed with us" if you only get 2 meg now and your on a 8meg deal already. if they do say that they are wrong. Bit like having a 1 inch exhaust and buying a turbo rated for 1000bhp and expecting to get 1000bhp from it. Ain't gonna happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Ok noob question here so please bear with me I don't think I will get much difference in speed with Virgin as I can't get their fibre service? So basically it will be ADSL which will come through the very same line but just through different provider? I chatted online with BT and was told I should be getting from 3.5-8 with estimated of 6mb. At first it all sounds good until I asked the question if I can cancel if I get a low speed (I can still cancel with SKY until end of month) but was told that if I get at least 3.5 I can't... so in theory I could end up with a worse speed/provider lol... oh well, I guess I should just be content with what I have now... I would still be tempted to isolate the building wiring and put the raw line straight into your modem/router to see if you get a noticable improvement in performance. It could be that the wiring in your house is incorrect or naf. so many builders/sparkies still think loop wiring for telephone is ok and this can have a real adverse effect on performance, as can budget price filters and terminations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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