phone cables

[Rupe]

I am confused with the whole situation with BT lines (and I doubt I am the only one).

 

Around Christmas I was asked to help out a family member. Her next-door neighbour (a good friend of hers) was having repeated problems with the phone line and BT broadband which BT seemed unable to fix. Eventually the BT 'engineer' (and I hesitate to use that word since it suggests competence) spotted that the phone line from the neighbour's house runs out over my family member's garden passing striaght through two yew trees (which were there years before the line was last replaced, then out over a third property's garden. Where it passed through the yew trees there was a branch which was rubbing hard on the wire.

 

BT 'engineer' announces that this must be the problem, and says to the neighbour "you need to get that branch cut off", then BT washed their hands of the whole problem. BT said that the neighbour had to arrange for the cutting, even though it isn't the neighbour's tree and isn't on the neighbour's property, which is clearly rather difficult to enforce. I always though in this situation it was down to BT to sort it out, since there was clearly a line fault and they have a contract to supply a satisfactory phone service to the house.

 

In the end, I took the branch off without disturbing the phone line, and the reduced tension in the wire does seem to have solved the problem. I did however notice while doing this that where the line passes through the third property it has been pressed up against an ash tree so hard and so long that the ash has enveloped the line completely - it runs straight through the trunk! Fortunately it doesn't seem to be causing a problem at the moment.

 

So does BT actually do any line clearance themselves? Or do they always take the "not our problem, fix it yourself" approach?

 

BT don't do line clearance because there is no danger associated with lines rubbing against trees. However it is there responsibility to replace worn out lines and they might prune the odd branch off here and there to facilitate that, but they do no preventative works at all as far as I know .

[tommer9]

BT don't do line clearance because there is no danger associated with lines rubbing against trees. However it is there responsibility to replace worn out lines and they might prune the odd branch off here and there to facilitate that, but they do no preventative works at all as far as I know .

 

Thats as i understand it too. They used to do a similar thing to the electric companies years ago, but from what I am told the money was pretty poor, and as far as I can see if it wasnt for the utilities act then the likes of Western Power probably wouldnt bother either.

[button1803]

Had a BT line in a Robinia last week, the tree had grown round it, just top of the crown, been like it for a long time, wires were everywhere think the bark was holding it together but if we touch it and it breaks our fault so left alone, reported it to BT, now there problem but yeah they dont help.

[niftysteve]

Both. Excessive crackling sound on a voice call, and evidently the poor line quality was preventing the ADSL from working.

 

 

 

I wondered if that was the case, it was certainly the impression that the BT linesman who came out gave. "Not my problem, mate! You'll have to get those trees cut".

 

 

 

Couldn't agree more. In this particular case the BT bloke said that he thought the problem was probably the trees, but that he could do anything about it. The trees were not on the phone owners land, but on at least two other properties, one of which (as it happens the one where the problem was occuring) just happened to be my family member's, so we were able to sort it out. However in many cases I doubt the phone owner can even find out whose land it is, or where the problem is.

 

It seems to me absolute rubbish if BT has no responsibility at all for carrying out line clearance.

 

crackling when on a voice call is usually moisture has got in at a joint somewhere quite often in the junction box on the house(my dad s a retired bt engineer)