Telephone/broadband wiring - Who's responsible for what?

At the weekend our phone line suddenly stopped working & a message appeared on the phone saying to check the line cord. The broadband wasn't affected though.
I reported the problem to TalkTalk and the woman at the contact centre wanted me to remove the bottom plate from the white box on the windowsill and plug the phone into the test socket. I told her that it wasn't a standard box but a one with a built-in filter into which the fibre optic wires are connected. She wouldn't deal with the problem any longer unless I did this, but it least showed that the line worked in the test socket, but then the broadband went off. She then told me to go and buy a new front plate and fit it myself, which I wasn't prepared to do, so she agreed to arrange for an engineer to call. This lady insisted that I would be charged £60 for this service as she claimed the white box is my responsibility.
An engineer came today and removed the plate with the built-in filter & replaced it with a thinner plate into which he plugged in a new filter. He told me that the built-in filters are often giving problems.
On the front of the box is Openreach so I'm guessing it's their property. I hope so or it's going to cost me £60.

The way I understand it Openreach are responsible for bring the service/wires to the property

You are NOT responsible for the Master Socket. That is BT Openreach's responsibility (and if you mess with it they can get a bit upset). If TalkTalk try to charge you, refuse to pay, and tell them you will see them in court. BTW, was the person you spoke to in a call centre in India? I will no longer speak to anyone in TalkTalk. Everything has to be in writing so there is a audit trail.

Astra99 said:

You are NOT responsible for the Master Socket. That is BT Openreach's responsibility (and if you mess with it they can get a bit upset). If TalkTalk try to charge you, refuse to pay, and tell them you will see them in court. BTW, was the person you spoke to in a call centre in India? I will no longer speak to anyone in TalkTalk. Everything has to be in writing so there is a audit trail.

Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up. Yes, I'm sure the person was in India, so very difficult to understand and too much background noise. The problem is that in order to get a problem sorted, they are the first people I get through to. I had regular problems with the line for a while (Openreach's problem) & got to hate that call centre so much, so I got in Fibre optic which for 2 years stopped all problems. I find the TalkTalk product to be very good, faster than even BT can manage and relatively cheap - but there's that India problem that I have come to detest. They won't listen and can be quite rude.

Sorry but that is not correct. The bad news is that "BT" (open reach,,) are only responsible for supply up to the "back" part of the master socket. The front plate with the filter is the responsibility of the resident. Hence talktalk insistence on checking the bb supply only when a router is directly plugged onto the test socket on the back part.
Talktslk have a community forum that can be helpful in understanding.

The Openreach engineer who fitted told me that the box was their property and no-one else should interfere with it. It came as a unit in one packet and as far as I know, each part relies on the other parts for the unit to function, so my reasoning is that it should be treated as one unit. Apart from that this was fitted only 2 years ago and should last longer than that. The engineer who came yesterday told me that these built-in filters are known to fail regularly (not fit for purpose?).

When they fit the filter plate, that is still removable without disturbing the actual master socket. So you still undo the two screws and remove the "lower section" - but now you remove the filter plate as well. Then you end up with the same master socket as before the filter was fitted.

Openreach are responsible for everything up to and including the master socket (which is the socket behind the removable plate) - the customer is responsible for everything after that, including the filter plate if fitted.

So in this case, the TalkTalk person was correct. The first step in diagnosing a" phone line" issue is to unplug all the customer wiring including filters etc and plug the phone directly into the master socket. If the problem disappears then that suggests a problem with the customer's wiring or equipment. If there's still a problem then you are now down to either the line or the phone - so the next step is to try another phone (preferably one that you know works), that will narrow it down further.

By now you have narrowed it down. It's either definitely the line - in which case you get your provider to deal with it.

Or the line is OK in which case you start tracking down your internal problem. You start plugging stuff back in one piece at a time, checking things are still working each step.