On Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:19:40 +0100, John Cartmell
wrote:

Thirty years ago you had to get BT to fit an external telephone extension. You
rang their sales department dealing with your number and they would give you a
price immediately on receiving your enquiry (after no more than three rings)
as long as you knew the distance from your main socket to the new extension
point. They would take your order and an engineer would come to do the job -
usually in a week or two.

So yesterday I tried to place an order for an external extension. After 40
minutes - including a short conversation with an employee who insisted that
external extensions don't exist - I was told that it would cost 130+GBP as
long as it took less than an hour and and extra 70GBP if it took an hour and a
minute. We never got to the question of 2 hours ;-(

I wondered if they could give me an estimate for the total cost as, although
it would have taken a 1970s engineer well less than an hour to do the job it
would also have taken a 1970s sales clerk less than 5 minutes to give me a
fixed price and take my order. Apparently they can get a survey done for the
job - and it will cost me 105GBP for the survey.

So.
Can anyone advise me if I can use standard internal extension wire for an
external non-BT connection? It will need to go underground (or overhead) for a
couple of metres and the rest will be pinned to an external wall.

Any general suggestions for completing the job?

If you use PVC internal cable, it won't last very long, as it absorbs
a certain amount of moisture - probably negligible for mains, but can
be quite serious for telephony. It would be better if you use either
PVC in a duct of some sort, or polyethylene cable.

What sort of overall distance are we talking for your extension? Would
it be possible to use a DECT phone?

--
Frank Erskine