BT Freelance XD7500 and Eir

Gerry1995

I have recently connected this phone to an Eir landline and there is no response, should this phone work with an Eir line. It was previously working with UPC line.

GreenFolder2

BT phones quite commonly break the normal wiring rules for RJ11 and it's quite possible the phone is shorting out the Eir socket by connecting something to pins other than the centre two.

The UPC / Virgin modem most likely uses only the 2 centre pins anyway and ignores the rest. The Eir wiring setup uses the other pins in parallel sometimes for some obscure reason. Phones shouldn't be connecting to anything other than the centre two, but often BT phones run lines in parallel on those too, or may be using them for DC power from the transformer plug etc etc.

Two possible solutions.

1) Plug the BT phone into the wall socket using the original cable that came with it and a BT to RJ11 adaptor.

2. Plug in an RJ11 cable that only has the centre two terminals wired and 4 contacts. This will avoid issues with the spare pins being used for strange BT purposes.

(Just look at the plug closely and you'll see there are only two wires in the centre. Usually you'll find an old modem cable or something similar that's wired like this)