how to activate a phone line?

Ok, hope i am explain myself clearly.Here goes, I have a two phone line sockets in my new house,one upstairs and one downstairs. The downstairs phone line was connected when we moved in when i joined eircom however after buying a new phone for upstairs as we can not hear the phone from downstairs when we are there, i plugged in the handset and the phone connection only for it not to work. There is no dial tone and i can not either make or recieve calls upstairs,only the phone downstairs works. So i called Eircom and they informed me that the phone line upstairs has not been activated...they will not do it as they only look after the main line.when i asked how to activate it she said she would orginise a eircom contractor to come out at a cost of €70! I asked is it a switch that they flip to turn on the upstairs phone socket she said no it is simple wireing work. I dont fancy paying nor do i have €70 for a contractor to come out and do 5 mins work(apperantly according to Eircom this is how long it takes to set up!)Plus i am not in the house during working hours and do not wish to take a day off for a 5 minute job to be done!Can anyone please tell me how i can do this myself or when i can look up how to do it. Any info appriciated.
Thanks in advance!

Re: how to activate a phone line??

Simply looks like a faulty wiring of the upstairs phone socket or that your new phone is faulty.
1- Try your new phone downstairs and check that it works
2 -Unplug the phone downstairs and only plug the phone upstairs and check that it works.

Result?

Re: how to activate a phone line??

have done both and the both phones are working perfectly...downstairs but either one when plugged in upstairs does not work? How do you mean faulty wireing...according to Eircom it needs to be wired a certain way to activate it??!!! Does that mean that it is purposly wired incorrectly so as that if a contractor is called out he just fixes it and it works?? Better still, how do i fix it myself?

Re: how to activate a phone line??

Hi Sarah,

It sounds like, as bacchus is suggesting, the upstairs socket is not wired correctly or the cable is damaged or broken somewhere between the two sockets.

So long as you have a working connection in the house, the fault is not with Eircom, and they are not responsible for anything beyond that. No activation as such is required, just a simple connection between the two sockets.

Can you follow the cable between the two sockets to see if you can locate the issue? Check the connections within the two sockets. If this still does not revleal the root cause, you might be as well off replacing the cable between the two sockets, should be straight forward job.

Regards,
Leo

Re: how to activate a phone line??

try boards.ie. theres a load of info on there about how to do this. it is fairly straight forward to do. i would imagine that if you take off the facepalte upstairs then the wires are not connected. if you need more help let me know cause i did it recently and can check at home the sequence if you want