Moving a BT router – how much and by whom?

We need to re-locate ours – is it only a BT engineer that can do this? Any idea on prices?

Thanks

You mean the primary socket that the router is plugged into?

Personally moved mine from a building attached to the office into the house to improve the signal. They aren’t complicated, only 4 wires, just ensure you take a picture of the layout before you disconnect. I did have the advantage that the new location was closer to the front of the house than the old, so could just shorten the cable length.

However, this will probably invalidate anything that BT would probably not have covered in the first place as they are quite literally the WORST business ever.

I seem to recall a price of £80 or so for a moving the primary point, but I could be wrong.

Moving the master socket is £160, I’ve just had it done. AFAIK, technically you’re not allowed to move it yourself as that “bit” belongs to the telecoms company. Ring your ISP, they will contact Openreach on your behalf. People seem to have bad experiences with BT/Openreach, but I’ve always had good service.

Thanks – Openreach have been a mixed bunch for me, some excellent some crap. Never know which advice is the correct advice!!

Moving the master socket is something only BT can do and will charge for, but you can just move the router as you wish. Get an decent extension wired in and you can plug it in anywhere, or depending on why you need to move it there may be better solutions.

In our house the master socket is in a cupboard in our bedroom, so I’ve got a modem and router in there, and use PowerLine (ethernet-over-power) to connect it to the main switch and wifi APs in the study downstairs.

Had some recent problems with my internet that were down to a fault in the internal extension from the master socket. Despite taking a bit longer than ideal to resolve, I can’t complain about BT’s customer service. They were polite, attentive and eventually sorted the problem. The one chink in the armour was the engineer turning up early and on a day I asked them not to because I wouldn’t be in. Fortunately my wife was in.

I moved our master socket. It was in a stupid place and Openreach can be a proper ballache to deal with if you’re a domestic customer. I also removed a load of random bits of crap hanging off the circuit that looked to have been installed in about 1975, and got much better DSL numbers afterwards as a result. There are two wires that do anything useful at all in a normal installation, the rest is just faff. It’s not complicated, a quick google will tell you all you need to know (and if you can’t figure it out from that then don’t do it).

Obviously this is terribly naughty and someone will be along to tell you that I’m very silly indeed for doing it, so I hasten to add that I’m not recommending this at all and your house will burn down if you even attempt to unscrew the socket.

Moved mine myself as previously the master was in one corner of the living room and then daisy chained to another extension in the other corner by the tv where my router was set up.

Used the proper cable and took pictures of the old set up.
End result was less cables and a speed increase of approx 1mb due to less connections.

In my defence I used to work for sky so have experience of messing around with phone wires.

Thanks all – I don’t want to do it myself as I will balls it up. Just wanted to know if an independent could do it or has to be (officially) BT. If its a fixed price I’m less concerned.

Got to watch moving sockets. I’ve worked for a WLR3 provider and our engineers used to do it as it was “only a couple of wires and dead easy to do”.

Problem is when there’s a later fault that could be utterly unrelated and it will be used as an excuse for a Openreach T&L charge. Openreach could sometimes tell as well by the line test results that a line had been moved post install. Wasn’t sure if the line length change altered the result or if those socket moves that were detected were just badly done.

Router is fine to move, although if it’s to bring the router closer to something you’re plugging into it, you’re usually better off getting a longer CAT5 cable to plug into the router.

So seeing as I don’t have any BT products but there is an ugly master socket and cable in the living room can I demand BT come and remove their obnoxious appendage asap? It’s theirs, it’s in my house, I don’t want it.

Just move it yourself. BT have no idea where the mastersocket is on any building.

Officially BT own the socket and even opening it will cause your children to explode.

Unofficially if they can’t tell you moved it, they’ll never know.

Ideally you want your router close as possible to the master socket to reduce the line cable run to it, as that is susceptible to line noise which can harm your signal quality and reduce speed or cause drop outs. Shorter the line the better.

What’s the reason for moving the router? WiFi signal?

For WiFi, you want a WiFi point somewhere central in the house. Often master sockets are stuck in a corner where the signal is half lost with the corner walls, and far away from the other side of the house.

You can do some WiFi extending. Either Ethernet cable to a Wireless Access Point or go with something like a Powerline WiFi extender that uses your mains cabling. Don’t get a WiFi repeater/booster that takes the existing signal to repeat it elsewhere, as it halves the data rate.

Similar if you just want a wired connection to the router. You can just get a long Ethernet cable and wire an Ethernet socket where you want it, or even an Ethernet switch which will give you lots of ports.

Our master socket is currently by a window, about 3′ from the floor.

We’re having some insulation board’s fitted at sine point so the socket will have to be moved anyways. I’d sooner move it across the room where we can hide it better.

Didn’t realise we should get Openreach in to do it.