Not Company owned Poles?

[busman]

Have a pole here that is on customer's property (house is about 600' from the road). Pole has a VERY old transformer and the power service for this one house. Reported to the PoCo back in July that the guy wire was broken and that the triplex was the only thing holding this old, rotten, bowed pole (carrying primary) in place. After about 5 calls over the last 8 months and no pole replacement (PoCo did come remove the dangling guy wire) I was started to wonder what was going on. For other scary poles I've called in, the PoCo has usually replaced them in a few weeks or sometimes days.

Anyway, was working with the local troubleman last night on a burnt meter and asked him about it. He said the pole probably belonged to the local cable company. I was very surprised to learn the PoCo would hang their equipment from a pole that they don't own. It would probably explain the lack of action. Is this common?

As always, thanks,

Mark

[Orgnizdlbr]

"Joint use" poles are everywhere. BT poles with power on them, power poles with BT on them, since phone and electric been invented...... Never seen a cable co owned pole, they go on BT or power poles.

Now ow to your specific situation, where I'm at, if BT wouldn't change that pole, which they usually will, we would set a new pole and take ownership......

[lewy]

We have poles owned by Bell up here,but most are owned by us. When it comes to private property we own the first pole in then the customer owns the rest. If we find a pole that is customer owned that is very bad we advise them to change it and if they refuse we have to get the electrical inspectors (ESA) to authorize us to turn the power off and obviously if the pole breaks before we don't replace. We never have an issue changing bad poles owned by Bell.

[busman]

"Joint use" poles are everywhere. BT poles with power on them, power poles with BT on them, since phone and electric been invented...... Never seen a cable co owned pole, they go on BT or power poles.

Now ow to your specific situation, where I'm at, if BT wouldn't change that pole, which they usually will, we would set a new pole and take ownership......

Thanks for the info. I was probably mistaken when I said a cable company. I didn't want to get into specific names, but the company in question provides telephone, internet and TV services (don't they all these days), so it probably is a "telephone" company pole. I guess it's even possible that it's a customer owned pole. Is there any way for me to check the tags and see whose it is? I just want to get this replaced before there is primary on the ground.

Thanks again,

Mark

[Orgnizdlbr]

Thanks for the info. I was probably mistaken when I said a cable company. I didn't want to get into specific names, but the company in question provides telephone, internet and TV services (don't they all these days), so it probably is a "telephone" company pole. I guess it's even possible that it's a customer owned pole. Is there any way for me to check the tags and see whose it is? I just want to get this replaced before there is primary on the ground.

Thanks again,

Mark

well, up here in Jersey older poles owned by BT have a BT prefix to pole #. Such as BT1234ab.... Ab being municipality pole is in. New have no prefix..... Power company have 2 letter company designation like PS for Public Service. New have no prefix.....

[bluestreak]

In our area it's about a 50/50 split between phone and power co ownership, trouble is no one wants to do maintenance because it costs money found a way to get action is to tell customer to call the state department of utility control it's amazing the action that a call from them brings. Sadly maintenance was the first victim of deregulation in Conn. now the execs are doing there best to sell off the last of the assets of the co, they're closing workcenters and selling off the property, the last two CEOs sold off all the generation and surprise surprise the companies thought bought them are making more money than the idiots that sold them could of thought of making.

[thrasher]

Our area we own about 90% of the poles. If it's a phone company pole they have 120 days to change it from our notice or we change it and take over ownership. Part of the way we own 90%. Our worst problem is we don't have a contract to move thier facilities so we cut off old rotten pole 6 inches above phone company and just wait for it to fall to get them to move stuff. In case your wondering why we don't have contract they wanted to pay $1.00 to move their mainline and $0.50 to move service. We said move it yourself at that price.