Discovered phone line

mel189

I've have just found a long black box attached to the wall on the front of my house with a black wire going into a disused phone connecting box. Then out of the other end its nailed on my wall all the way along to my neighbours house.
No permission was asked for or given. Please tell me I can rip this off my wall. Without me being prosected....

iniltous

How long have you lived there ?, perhaps the cable existed when you moved in and permission was granted from a previous owner/occupant, there may be a wayleave that endures through change of ownership ( so they don’t have to get a new permission ) from you.
TBH, if the cable is ‘live’ and you remove it, presumably the only person to suffer would be your neighbour.
With terraces or semi detached properties, it’s quite common for the cabling  to be run along neighbouring houses to get to the required one, especially if they are or where local authority housing or business buildings that have changed to residential where ( AFAIK ) a lot of deemed consent was assumed.
Would you be prosecuted if you arbitrarily removed it is unclear, ( probably not ) but I would be more concerned about neighbourly relationships, especially if the only realistic way your neighbour can be served, is the way it currently exists, as they would obviously have quite a wait before their service was restored.

Browntoa

Could be a distribution block , in which case you will probably take down all your neighbours phone lines.

Bt openreach can charge you for making it good as malicious

TadleyBaggie

mel189 said:

I've have just found a long black box attached to the wall on the front of my house with a black wire going into a disused phone connecting box. Then out of the other end its nailed on my wall all the way along to my neighbours house.
No permission was asked for or given. Please tell me I can rip this off my wall. Without me being prosected....

Are you saying this is a new installation or just that you've never noticed it before?