On Wed, 4 Jan 2006 13:34:44 +0000, Richard A Downing
wrote:

My bungalow has an old fashioned telephone system consisting of a BT
cable connected to a grey box (about 70x40mm tapered with a single
screw fixing).

I'm puzzled as to your wiring, and how it got to be this way. What you
describe is typical of older wiring, but unusual for a line that has
been upgraded to ADSL.

Not at all. BT make no changes at all to the consumer's installation
when they enable ADSL. They normally don't even leave the exchange.

What you should have is a square, white "New, new style" BT master
socket (NTE 5). This is the sort with a removable faceplate on a
socket, so that you're allowed (legitimately) to add your own extension
wiring to the fixed connectors on the faceplate. The backplate of the
box is still "BT only" and contains the incoming wires from the grey
oval box 53 and the "master socket" capacitor etc.

Only if BT have visited for any reason since 1984, otherwise (as the OP
has) you will probably have an old GPO hard wired set up.

What you seem to have is an "old, new style" BT master socket, whether
installed by BT or not. I'm just surprised that this survived the ADSL
upgrade process without getting replaced - I thought BT policy was to
swap these when on-site for any ADSL commissioning.

They don't visit normally, see above.

I have ADSL filters on all the used
sockets, of course.

This is often a source of trouble, You're better off getting a proper
BT master faceplate with a single ADSL filter in it, then running
voice-only extensions downstream of that. Solwise will sell you one for
a tenner or so that plugs straight into an NTE 5
http://www.solwise.co.uk/adsl_splitters.htm
This is what BT usually install when they visit for an ADSL install, but
there are some routes (such as migration from ISDN/Home Highway) where
you don't get one supplied by BT.

Don't (IMHO) extend the data side of ADSL beyond the filter. If you have
to, leave your master socket whereever the phone cable enters the
building (but never plug directly into it)), put an ADSL filtered NTE 5
near the ADSL modem and run the voice extensions from that point
onwards.

As long as you use BT spec twisted pair cable (as used for normal
phones) you can extend the ADSL feed to anywhere in the house using the
Clarity dual output faceplate. Ensure of course you use a twisted pair
within the cable blue/white: white/blue etc