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Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

mbizzle12 — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 11:58:05 GMT

Hi,

Recently moved into a new house and I'm in the process of replacing all of the phone line sockets. We have a number of phone line extensions that will never be used. Rather than remove them or place an ugly blank plate on them, I'd like to put a new phone socket on them but not wire them in. I need to do this anyway as some of the old sockets have a double connection port on the front and my new sockets only have a single connection port.

To be clear, I am not changing the master socket which comes into the living room in the front of the house.

I've read that to terminate the extensions, you can pull the wires out and tape them up but that you also need to disconnect the extension from the master socket as well, which you can access by unscrewing the bottom plate. Here is a picture of the opened master socket:

So is this is a case of just removing those three wires in the foreground? And if so, is it OK just to tape them up and keep them in the socket?

Finally, assuming we wanted to use one of the extensions in the future, would it be a simple job of just reconnecting those three wires and then doing the same on the extension socket?

Many thanks!

Re: Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

imjolly — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 12:04:42 GMT

by removing the wires on the back of master that should disable all extension sockets

connecting a specific extension socket may not be that easy as reconnecting the wires at master would make all extension working again and you would then need to disable the extensions you did not want/need connected. Your extension socket may be connected to another extension which in turn connects to master so would need to be left working as well

Re: Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

Keith_Beddoe — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 12:05:15 GMT

@mbizzle12

Welcome to this user forum.

Who provides your phone and broadband connection?

Re: Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

mbizzle12 — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 12:10:35 GMT

Our broadband provider is Airband (BT don't currently operate fibre in our area) which comes in to the property through different line so we don't actually use the BT line at all.

Re: Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

mbizzle12 — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 12:12:38 GMT

Thanks, that makes sense as I've read elsewhere that extensions are on a daisy chain so they may all need to be re-connected.

Re: Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

mbizzle12 — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 14:23:06 GMT

So on closer inspection, the phone line extension sockets that I would like to replace/remove aren't actually phone line extensions - they are ethernet sockets, like these:

I've unscrewed them and the wiring is completely different to the phone socket.

I'm assuming that these would once have been connected to a modem router in the house and, now that they've been disconnected, it is OK to simply remove the wiring from the back, tape it up, and screw on a new plate? Obviously they are completely redundant in the Wi-Fi age!

Re: Replacing/removing excess sockets in new house

Devon_Dave — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 22:49:10 GMT

As you ar a customer of airband and the fact that this is a BT Retail /Consumer forum. You maybe better off posting on their forum.