Removing old telephone wire from pole

[ShredderXLE]

Hello,

I have a telegraph pole at the end of my driveway which has an overhead wire to my house. I moved in in 2010 and its never had a dial tone. I dont have a house phone and dont even think its connected to anything at the exchange so is completely redundant.

The recently fledged starlings have taken to sitting on it rows and then crapping all over my car so i'd like to get rid of it.

If I contact Openreach I assume they will need to do a survey and charge a billionty pounds. Is this something I could do myself or another trades person could do?

If I cut it off where it joins the bracket on the fascia board on my house will I blow up? I assume no dial tone means no electric passing through it? But then ive got about 20m of loose cable to tie off somewhere around the pole so it ideally means I need to get up the pole and cut it off from there - I assume its mechanically connected to the pole somewhere and the other end of the cable back to the next pole in the street wont just fall off the other side and into the road. Ive got some ladders that would get me up there.

[Rich1973]

There is the wire and also the cable. Wouldn't be touching it myself. Presumably with the great land line switch off they will be coming down soon anyway.

[miniman]

[J6542]

Are you sure it’s not providing your internet? If it doesn’t , cut it where it comes into your property and roll it up back to the pole. The next time it’s windy phone bt and tell them it has broken and you want it removed

[The Three D Mucketeer]

OPENREACH removed my pole and wiring free of charge when I asked them to , when I went on underground fibre . Whilst it's there OPENREACH are responsible for periodic safety checks on the pole. I was the only line on the pole , which I assume your property was.
I suppose they may object to remove the pole on the grounds that if the property was sold , the new occupier may require overhead cabling.

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Sunday 19th May 21:16

[vaud]

[quote=ShredderXLE]Hello,

I have a telegraph pole at the end of my driveway which has an overhead wire to my house. I moved in in 2010 and its never had a dial tone. I dont have a house phone and dont even think its connected to anything at the exchange so is completely redundant.
[quote]

How do you connect to the internet?

[ShredderXLE]

J6542 said:

Are you sure it’s not providing your internet? If it doesn’t , cut it where it comes into your property and roll it up back to the pole. The next time it’s windy phone bt and tell them it has broken and you want it removed

No home internet connection here, I just use my mobile.

[chrisch77]

Call open reach, they will remove all external copper lines for FREE! We had all our redundant overhead wires (2 lines plus another overhead link to the garage) removed a few months ago.

[ShredderXLE]

said:

Thats interesting to know! I will contact them in that case. My only prior experience with them was when I widened the dropped kerb and Highways said I needed to contact them due to the works being in the vicinity of the pole. They wanted a couple of hundred quid just to send someone out to take a look from the window of the van and an email back to say it would be fine.

Theres one other separate wire that goes to my neighbours house so the pole will need to stay.

[ShredderXLE]

Has the quoting feature gone wrong?

[vaud]

ShredderXLE said:

Has the quoting feature gone wrong?

Yes it breaks occasionally.

[ShredderXLE]

chrisch77 said:

Call open reach, they will remove all external copper lines for FREE! We had all our redundant overhead wires (2 lines plus another overhead link to the garage) removed a few months ago.

Sweet! Thank you will do that then.

[Chumley.mouse]

I cut the old one off at my last house when i had scaffolding up , dropped it down on to the road , curled it up to the post and tied it around the pole, cut the access off and put it in the wheelie bin ……job done.

[Danm1les]

Chumley.mouse said:

I cut the old one off at my last house when i had scaffolding up , dropped it down on to the road , curled it up to the post and tied it around the pole, cut the access off and put it in the wheelie bin ……job done.

We did this too, Openreach told us too, and then the next time an engineer was working on the pole, they cut it off from the top.

[BoostMonkey]

This is what we did too and was advised to do it by a family member who is an Openreach engineer.

[ro250]

BoostMonkey said:

This is what we did too and was advised to do it by a family member who is an Openreach engineer.

Which is odd as I thought you weren't allowed to touch anything outside of your house as it's all the property / managed by Openreach.

[Zarco]

I'd just cut it off.

[BoostMonkey]

ro250 said:

Which is odd as I thought you weren't allowed to touch anything outside of your house as it's all the property / managed by Openreach.

I'm sure if you go by the book, they should do it themselves.
But as its infrastructure they are removing over the next decade and there is so little power running through it.
They really aren't fussed with you chopping it off yourself.

[Caddyshack]

Just as a safety caveat...we have a 100 amp live feed coming to our house on the same pole as the phone line, obviously it is a thick cable but do not get very DEAD by cutting a power cable.

[ShredderXLE]

Ive emailed Openreach in the hope they might get rid of it for nothing like mentioned above. Otherwise will cut it off, coil it up with some cable ties and strap it around the pole.