How to get telephone utility wires removed?

Question

I am trying to determine how to get old telephone utility wires removed from my house. I do not want or have service for a telephone and the old wires are hanging across my yard from the power pole in the street. Is there a general service you can cal for removal? I tried calling Qwest (local phone company here in Seattle) and cannot get through without currently having service with them. A bit of a paradox. Any help appreciated!

Answer 1

You can't.  Those wires, even thought they are connected to your house, do not belong to you-they belong to the phone company.  The phone company is not going to take them down because of the cost that THEY would have to cover when you move out and the next person who moves into your house wants phone service.  Also, the wire on that line aren't only your phone lines.  There are also the electric lines up there that are the power supply to your house.  So unless you have a whole lot of candles on hand I would suggest not messing with those wires.  What you can do is call the utility companies and get permission to have the lines run underground.  But, that is going to be tough to get their ok...and it will be expensive.

Answer 2

it depends on if those are drop wires, that feed your home from a phone pole, and no one in your home is using those lines, or if they are a feeder cable that feed to a telephone terminal...

if they are drop wires, that are no longer in use, you can just cut them down (be sure to know what wires you are cutting, or you could end up with serious injury or death if you cut power lines) and if you cut your cable lines, you will have to call the cable company to repair the lines...

in NY verizon has a sticker with a phone number on it on most of there ped boxes, if you find a number on the ped boxes in your area you should try to call that number, or find the "pro-active" phone line for your local RBOC (i assume quest in your case) advise them that you plan on doing construction or renovations and wish they remove the dead dropwires from your location...

most likely you are going to have to end up cutting these wires off yourself, as the phone company doesn't like to remove wires feeding a location, even if they are currently not in use, this reduces the need for them to send a tech, or rewire the building in the event you choose to activate dial tone with them, or for a future tenant/owner.

if you do decide to cut the wires down yourself, you should be sure that they are "dead" and not feeding dial tone to anyone else in the house/building or an adjacent home