Openreach moved phone cable - now it's too low over our drive for delivery vehicles

emmachizit

To restore our landline/internet Openreach abandoned their damaged cable through trees and fixed a new line to a telegraph pole on the road outside our house across our front garden to the eaves just above our front door - it's a bungalow so the telephone cable is very low/less than 3 metres above the surface of our drive.It looks terrible - what are the rules about height of phone lines [drop lines?] over the main access to residential property?

emmachizit

In case there's no remedy and reading about BT getting rid of copper wiring - when will this new copper wire phone line become redundant?

Neil_Jones

emmachizit said:

To restore our landline/internet Openreach abandoned their damaged cable through trees and fixed a new line to a telegraph pole on the road outside our house across our front garden to the eaves just above our front door - it's a bungalow so the telephone cable is very low/less than 3 metres above the surface of our drive.It looks terrible - what are the rules about height of phone lines [drop lines?] over the main access to residential property?

Lets be honest here, how many deliveries do you actually have a year that require a big van that may interfere with that?  Two, three at the most on average?

You make it sound like you have massive articulated lorries that turn up all day every day and park on your driveway.

The bulk of your deliveriess will be either private, come via Royal Mail or are delivered in supermarket style vans which aren't much bigger than your typical white van.  They'll almost certainly where possible park in the street, and not on your driveway.

Re: rules - probably not because every situation and location is different.  If it was going across a public highway then yes maybe it would be better to have it higher.  But because its above your driveway and you'll only have either a normal car or at most a small van and nobody else will be approaching it, I don't see what the issue is here.

Emmia

It sounds as though there isn't a practical higher fixing point at one end as well, which could dictate the height of the cable. 

Presumably burying it isn't an option, or would cost you money?

brewerdave

emmachizit said:

In case there's no remedy and reading about BT getting rid of copper wiring - when will this new copper wire phone line become redundant?

When/if they replace with fibre it will probably follow the same route ie slung across from the nearby pole.