Removing an external cable

[TheRandomCable]

Hello

A job I have been meaning to get done for a while is now on the cards but I need advice. I have three phone sockets in the house that I know of.

One by the front door which is the biggest and has a sort of plug in (image 1). I think this then has a two cables leaving it. Cable 1 which sadly goes under tiled flooring then pops out and follows by the stairs up to a bedroom phone socket (image 2) which is the image with two cables seemingly leading into it.

Then I think another cable also somehow leaves the box at the front of the house that I cannot see, it goes out through the wall and all the way around the side and back of the house and enters the socket box (image 3) that has the TV aerial next to it.

The above is speculation because I have not opened anything yet. Now that I have wireless internet I am more inclined to try and get rid of the external cable because I do not use the phone sockets for anything.

Now I know very little about electrics and even less about phone cables so here are the questions.

Can I safely open the box at the front of the house to check how or if two cables are leaving it?

Any suggestions on how 2 cables are leaving box 1? The previous owners were right bodgers so maybe behind the skirting board for some reason

Why might the box upstairs, which I intend to leave alone, have two cables going into it?

Most importantly what are the general steps for disconnecting the cable around outside of the house?

[licquorice]

Picture 1 is the master socket where the external line enters. It has a 'doubler' socket  plugged into it to provide 2 connections which can simply be unplugged. The 2 cables will be the external feed and the internal cable to the extensions.

Picture 2 is probably an intermediate socket which daisy chains to picture 3. I.e one cable goes to socket 1 and the other to socket 3.

I presume you have full fibre broadband if you are not using any of the sockets.

Extension wiring will be connected to terminals 2&5 (possibly also 3) in the master socket and can be removed.

[TheRandomCable]

Thanks for the very speedy reply.

The reason that I do not think 2 daisy chains into 3 is that the cable would need to go from the front bedroom, into a back bedroom then down through the ceiling and run down the wall or inside it. The much easier route is to connect it from socket 1 running around the outside of the house. Plus I cannot see any cable entering 3 so I guess it must arrive from behind. However that is only my logic so you could well be right.

Is the first course of action to open box 3 and see where the cable comes from?

I bypassed fibre and went straight from phoneline internet to 4g or 5g. Whatever it might be 😀

[Devon_Dave]

What socket does your router plug into? 

[TheRandomCable]

The router does not plug in anywhere other than a power socket.

[licquorice]

Have a look inside box1 as that appears to be where your external cable connects, the master socket.

Extension wiring and sockets can simply be removed once disconnected in the master socket.

[TheRandomCable]

Thanks for the advice so far. It turns out that I have discovered another box upstairs hidden in a built in waderobe. The other upstairs box (image 2) must daisychain into this which explains the two cables.

When I get a spare 30 minutes in the next couple of days I will open up the front of the main box and see what is going on then report back.

[TheRandomCable]

I have now had the chance to open the main socket and here is the photo. I tried to jiggle the outside cable to make something in the house move but no joy. Any ideas?

[Devon_Dave]

That cable feeding the extension sockets is not a standard telephone cable, it is a stranded type used by alarm companys.

[TheRandomCable]

I have looked closer at the cable going around the external of the house from the wall by the main socket to the socket around the back. Where the external cable housing has worn through I see that it contains six small coloured cables.

I have no idea why they needed to wire all six connections to the back of the main socket if this only leads to one socket (which I guess only needs 3 cables to power it?), but is this enough evidence  to allow me to take out all six small wires that are connected in the master and then pull away the cable from the wall? Or do I need to now open the socket this wire feeds into to know if 3 wires feed in and three are dead ends?