How to Remove Telephone Poles From Private Property

Telephone poles and power poles have been used for many years to provide utilities and communication to homes and businesses. Even though many cities are beginning to push utility and communications companies for more underground structures, poles are still the quickest and cheapest solution. Removing a telephone pole or power pole on private property can be very simple or a very large challenge. Let’s look at what has to take place in order to remove one of these poles.

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Identify what is on the pole and who owns it. This is an indicator of how difficult pole removal will be. For example: if power (Duke Power) , cable TV (Time Warner Cable), and the telephone company (AT&T) all have a cable on the pole, removal will not be quick or easy.

Contact each company that has a cable on the pole in question. Each company will send out an engineer to see what they need to do to get their cable off of the pole being removed. Do not be surprised if you get billed for some of the work they have to do.

Identify who owns the pole. Usually this is either the power company or the phone company. Most poles have a tag indicating pole ownership. An example would be "DPCO" for Duke Power Co. or "SBT" for Southern Bell Telephone (AT&T). If there is no tag, talk with each of the engineers and they will know who owns the pole.

Wait for each company to complete its work and ask to be updated on any problems that will delay their work. Once everyone is off the pole, the company that owns the pole will then remove it.

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