How do I activate additional phone sockets?

Question

I have moved to a new house and only one of 4 sockets in the house work. They are all new White BT boxes but I get no signal when I plug in a phone. I rang BT twice and got two different answers. The first was that I would have to pay £160 for an engineer visit but when I called the second time I was told that BT is only responsible for activating a single socket and that I should get a local electrician to do it. When I asked if I could pay for a BT engineer to visit I was told that this is not possible despite what I was told on my first call. Does anyone know if BT will send an engineer or do I have to get a local electrician? Thanks.

Answer 1

'I have moved to a new house and only one of 4 sockets in the house work'
When you say new house do you mean new to you but it has been standing there 5/10/15/etc years or as in you have bought a new build and are the first person to live in it?
If it is just simply new to you then the other sockets may not work because they are either faulty or have not been connected to the master one. Openreach only maintain up to the master socket so if you wanted an engineer from Openreach to call out you would have to ring BT and ask for the installation of an Extension Socket, it is a £130 call out and either £65 or £75 fro EACH extension socket you want, regardless of whether the engineer installs new ones or simply connects the existing ones.
If it is a new build the developer who built the house should have connected the extensions for you. Give them a ring an I am sure they will send someone out.
Or you could do it yourself, if you have an NTE5, like so;
Take off the lower art of the front plate and see if any what wires are connected to the back of the face plate. If there aren't any but you can see loose wires they are probably for the extension sockets. Depending on what cable it is you will need to get an IDC tool to punch them into the IDC terminals, for the love of god though DON'T use a screw driver, knife or anything else but an IDC tool, you can get a disposable one from B&Q for about £1.
Best and easiest way to know what colour cables to connect to what IDC terminal is to take the front off the extension sockets, see what IDC terminals they are connected to and match them on the NTE5 face plate.