Does every house have an NTU?

johnfás

Hi

I am having a major problem with Eircom - Phone and Broadband down for the last several days. We have had the engineers out but they cannot isolate whether the problem is inside or outside the house and thus whether the problem is their or ours responsibility. Furthermore, they cannot find the point at which their cabling enters our house or an NTU so they cannot isolate our internal wiring from the external system.

Is it possible that our house does not have an NTU at all? Eircom have never been inside my house in their current incaranation - they have never dug up my garden in the 20+ years I have been living here. Furthermore, the phone socket I have in the hall still says Posts and Telegraphs on it!

There is a funny circular thing to the left of the phone socket. No idea what that is, the engineers have opened it up, fiddled around with it. Initially he told me it was definately a problem outside and they would fix it at their cost. Then he came back 20 mins later and said likely at my end and would cost me 1000 euro.

The situation is ridiculous and is getting no nearer to a resolution.

Snowbat

The circular thing is a junction box. At my parents' house, the phone line emanates from a box (NTU?) under the eaves of the neighbouring house and terminates in one of those circular enclosures just inside the front door. A twisted grey/white line runs from there to a Telecom Eireann-branded RJ11 plate like the one in your picture (Telecom Eireann installed that when they replaced a dead rotary-dial phone with a pushbutton model).

Eircom technicians like to disclaim responsibility for any lines and enclosures on your property, even those installed by their predecessors.

Solair

NTUs were only introduced in about 2001. All it does is let you isolate the internal wiring in the house (by removing the faceplate) and test the line.

Btw, why is there a big hole in the Telecom socket?

Just tell eircom that they need to fit a new NTU. They're responsible for the wiring to the NTU or the first socket. That socket's broken and ancient, so they should fit a new one.

johnfás

Thanks for the help guys. After quite a bit of argument Eircom have now come and run a new cable into the house, fitted an NTU and a new socket in the hall. I've attached a photo of the NTU.

Just one final question. Following our poor experience with Eircom we are considering moving to UPC for all our services. If we were to do this, would it be possible to do the following in order to give effect to all our phone sockets using the UPC system:
1) Disconnect the black incoming cable into the NTU (Eircom's Cable)
2) Connect a new phone cable incoming into the NTU
3) On the other end of that cable connect a RJ11 plug
4) Plug that RJ11 cable into the port on the UPC router.

It seems to me that if the UPC router can handle such a configuration it should work?

We also have an alarm monitoried by top security, it is wired as an offshoot of the phone socket in the hall. If the above works the alarm would be wired into the UPC router... but I have no idea if it would still have the ability to diall out to the monitoring service.

Thanks again for all your help!

Solair

johnfás wrote: »

Thanks for the help guys. After quite a bit of argument Eircom have now come and run a new cable into the house, fitted an NTU and a new socket in the hall. I've attached a photo of the NTU.

Just one final question. Following our poor experience with Eircom we are considering moving to UPC for all our services. If we were to do this, would it be possible to do the following in order to give effect to all our phone sockets using the UPC system:
1) Disconnect the black incoming cable into the NTU (Eircom's Cable)
2) Connect a new phone cable incoming into the NTU
3) On the other end of that cable connect a RJ11 plug
4) Plug that RJ11 cable into the port on the UPC router.

It seems to me that if the UPC router can handle such a configuration it should work?

We also have an alarm monitoried by top security, it is wired as an offshoot of the phone socket in the hall. If the above works the alarm would be wired into the UPC router... but I have no idea if it would still have the ability to diall out to the monitoring service.

Thanks again for all your help!

I'm glad that they tidied up the wiring for you. That's not a picture of an NTU though, that's just a junction box.

The NTU is just their newer white socket with a removable face plate. All it does, in reality, is let you disconnect your internal wiring so that you can troubleshoot the line.

If you get UPC phone service, simply disconnect the incoming eircom line at the first socket i.e. the NTU.

You won't be able to disconnect the wires in that junction box without cutting them as they are joined with a crimp-on gel-filled connector. Those cannot be removed. Basically they're a little bubble of gel with 2 blades inside. When the eircom guy puts them on, he just sticks the wires in, squeezes the connector and the blades sink into the wires making a veyr fast, solid connection and it's sealed with gel.

If you remove the 2 screws on the front of your new phone socket, the face plate will come off.

Then behind that there's a further two screws which will remove the back plate from the wall. You'll find two large screw terminals on the back of that which is where the eircom line's connected. Disconnect the cable from these, and cover each end of the wire with insulating tape (not sellotape) to prevent it from causing any issues / touching the terminals etc. You might also note which wire was connected to which terminal, there will only be 2 connected if you have one line. Maybe write the colours in marker inside the socket or something in case you ever decide to re-connect the eircom line in the future. Put it back together.

Then just plug double adaptor into the front of the eircom socket, plug your UPC phone cable into one side and your normal phone into the other and it should supply all the extensions!

Just check that there's definitely no dial tone or eircom line connected before you do this. The UPC phone adaptor may be damaged if you connect it to a live telephone line as the local exchange can deliver quite lot of power!

To be perfectly honest, if I were you I would just get a decent cordless phone with multiple handsets. Most people don't seem to bother with wired extension sockets anymore.