On 13/11/2019 21:53, JoeJoe wrote:
A friend's new puppy bit through a telephone cable, and she doesn't have
a dialling tone any more, and the house phone doesn't work. She asked me
to have a look, so am planning to drop by tomorrow to see what I can do.

She sent me a few (pretty poor quality) photos, see he
https://imgur.com/a/cPQT0cJ

A few questions:

- There seem to be two cables entering the socket, one of them cut off.
Can I assume that the one coming from "the outside" is the one that is
cut off, and the other goes to an extension? I'll have a closer look
tomorrow of course.
- I am familiar with BT sockets, but hers is an NTL (now Virgin Media I
believe) one - she is on cable. Are they the same? (in terms of the wiring)
- There seem to be 3 wires connected within the socket. Is this because
the only cable left connected is the one going to an extension? (as in
http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/wiring_info.htm)


Any tips will be much appreciated.

That looks like a normal NTE5 style master socket. The incoming cable is
the one wired to two connections, in the back of the socket. These are
often labelled A & B. They normally are carried on the blue pair, as
appears to be the case here.

The extension wiring is onto the back of the removable face plate (that
allows all the extensions to be disconnected for testing simply by
unplugging the face plate). Its correct that only three wires should be
connected. The connections here are normally numbered 2 - 5, with the
blue pair being connected to 2 and 5, and then the orange on 3.

All the terminals on that box are Insulation Displacement Connections -
basically you just push the insulated wire into the terminal with the
right tool, and it cuts through the insulation at the point of contact.

The best way to fix it, if there is wire spare, is to remove the stub of
wire left connected to the box, re-terminate the free end of the
incoming wiring. Ideally you need an IDC punch down tool to do this, but
you can do it with care using a fine tipped screwdriver to push the wire
in from either side of the blades of the terminal. Don't push directly
into the blades though - apply force onto the wire just beside them.

If there is not enough spare wire, then you will need to joint the
cables. Either with a appropriate comms style junction box, or
heatshrink and solder, or possibly IDC "jelly bean"[1] style connectors
if you have access to them.

[1] Kind of like the wago terminal of the comms world!


--
Cheers,

John.

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