Replacing BT Infinity Modem and Home hub

[Mark.J]

Sadly not all sockets are wired in the same way. My old house had standard BT sockets but when you removed the faceplate the wiring was a total mess and you definitively would not wish to touch anything without an expert to hand. Heck I don't even know how the BT engineer knew what to do when he put in the first ADSL line all those years ago because everything was mixed up and in unusual places.

I spent a good couple of days without a working phone line after needing to do a trial-and-error session of working out what went where, which followed my first attempt that saw all the wires spring out before I'd had a chance to record their positions. At least the new owner was happy as they took over the only house in the area with good broadband wiring, a point I sold it on .

[truth4free]

Assuming its not an old star system (which only a few still have and what an engineer would have to replace for FTTC anyway) extension wiring should not be an issue. The only time it becomes an issue between the master socket and the extension faceplate is if it has multiple joins along it (which is wrong to begin with) and the person before also decided not to join the same coloured wires.

In that case its probably better to just rip it out and rewire when it comes to FTTC, even ADSL2+ to gain optimum speeds from extension cabling.

However if thats not an option which wire goes where even with multiple joins or even test if its working properly, is a few minutes job with a good multimeter that does continuity testing. Even less time if you have a set of alligator clips for the extension end Certainly less than it would take in some instances to rewire.

That said though, yes point taken some peoples extension wiring is an utter mess, and some even if you can deduce what goes where (which IMO is easy) then yeah i agree having the engineer run a new extension while he is there is probably the best option.

Why we should all pay a fixed fee for the privileged of their visit though when id guess in most cases they basically just have to screw on the iplate i dunno. I have no doubt will charge more if additional work is needed first, (As an example there seems to be conflicting reports as to if you are charged extra if they have to move the master socket, some say yes others say they did it freely) following that ethos they should also be charging less if they basically have to do nothing.

We have been here before though with new products, when ADSL first came out (from my memory, maybe wrongly) didnt you have to have an engineer visit then also? I suspect give it a year or so and the install and BT visit wont be a requirement for FTTC.

I find it totally bizarre when ever a new broadband product comes out we all have to use equipment BT state. Even if you go with Sky it seems having the Openreach Huawei (or whatever BT decide) is a requirement. Its like the ISDN and early ADSL days, id had thought we could move on from that by now.

PS:
Congrats to you mark on maybe being one of the first to market a home on its broadband potential hehe

[toekneem]

A friend has just signed up to FTTC, which i will also hopefully be doing sooner or later.

I understand that from BT and many others a seperate modem and router is supplied. Modem normally being something from Huawei if from BT and the router being a home hub (rebadged linksys thing i seem to recall, maybe wrongly).

This is going to be a pain for him and a even bigger pain for me.

Has anyone got any recommendations on replacing this with a single VDSL modem/router device???

Two that definitely work are the Draytek Vigor 2750 and the Fritzbox 7390. I know because I have used both and still currently use the fritzbox 7390. Please remember that you are SUPPOSED to use the Openreach modem, but I do not know of anyone who has had the service terminated because they don't.
The two I have mentioned are expensive and the Fritzbox 7390 I currently use is a Router/Modem/Voip/ Dect base station /PSTn line, Integrated software answer machines and software fax machines . Expensive yes, but you get something for your money.

[truth4free]

Yep in addition to the Billion mentioned earlier ive been reading up on the Draytek and Fritzbox both also seem to be impressive devices. Not cheap as you mention but seem to be good quality.