Phone pole and trees!

Veryskint

Hi, I have a phone line that runs through my neighbours tree, and I have slow slow slow broadband, and an intermittently crackly BT phone line. Am I right in thinking that the branches that are now pushing our phone line down, are likely to cause the problems....?

If the wire were to snap, would BT charge the neighbour? Me?

I am building up the courage to ask the neighbour if he wouldn't mind cutting off just the branch that is pushing our wire down, but I figured it would be best if I knew what I was talking about first....

Any help much appreciated

spike7451

Veryskint wrote: »

Hi, I have a phone line that runs through my neighbours tree, and I have slow slow slow broadband, and an intermittently crackly BT phone line. Am I right in thinking that the branches that are now pushing our phone line down, are likely to cause the problems....?

If the wire were to snap, would BT charge the neighbour? Me?

I am building up the courage to ask the neighbour if he wouldn't mind cutting off just the branch that is pushing our wire down, but I figured it would be best if I knew what I was talking about first....

Any help much appreciated

You're in a very murkey gray area here...Although anything from the Master socket back to the BT PSTN exchange is BT's responsibility,they often pass the buck back to the landowner because in their view,the line runs thru the tree & the tree is not BT's problem.So anyfault that occurs on the line you will be charged for because of the tree even tho the tree may not be the root cause. (no root pun intended!)

warehouse

Veryskint wrote: »

Hi, I have a phone line that runs through my neighbours tree, and I have slow slow slow broadband, and an intermittently crackly BT phone line. Am I right in thinking that the branches that are now pushing our phone line down, are likely to cause the problems....?

If the wire were to snap, would BT charge the neighbour? Me?

I am building up the courage to ask the neighbour if he wouldn't mind cutting off just the branch that is pushing our wire down, but I figured it would be best if I knew what I was talking about first....

Any help much appreciated

I had this exact same problem that caused merry h3ll for me, so here's what I know.

Our phone line and broadband started playing up last Summer. Our line went directly through a trees branches that belonged to one of our neighbours, and I suspected the tree as the line was permanently pulled tight due to the tree growth. After the 3rd engineer they found the worn down cable and replaced the drop wire between my house and the pole. They put the wire in a different position so that the tree wouldn't affect it for a while.

Luckily the neighbour is very approachable and friendly. I told him the problem and that the tree was likely to affect the other neighbours lines as well. He told me that he had already spoken to BT about the tree, and was told by BT to leave it! Why, he asked? Well if the tree causes damage to the wires, BT will simply replace the wires. If he were to cut part of the tree down and damage the wires, then BT would charge him for the cost of repairing the damage. So obviously he won't risk damaging the wires by cutting back the tree.

Rather than go through the worry of no phone or broadband every time there's a storm I simply switched to Virgin, which is underground wires all the way, (plus I had a serious issue about the time it took BT to fix the fault).