Overhead telephone line

[Mazza3]

My elderly mother lives in a rural location and relies on her BT broadband to activate her lifeline support should she have a fall.

Her overhead telephone line comes diagonally to her house via a neighbour's property.  This line has been brought down approximately 6 times in the last 4/5 years, twice already this year. This causes major disruption for my mother. We think the neighbour is bringing it down deliberately as they do not want it crossing their property. Apparently the line used to come direct from the road to my mother's property, therefore not crossing a neighbouring property.

Should BT or Open Reach be investigating why this line is coming down so often?  When querying if the line could be moved to come directly into the property, Open Reach advised that we would have to pay. 

[-Richie-]

The network is owned and maintained by Openreach, anything to do with their network would need discussed with them, have a look at When to contact Openreach 

Openreach might charge for moving the network to cover costs involved, no communication provider, including BT have a say on how Openreach manage their network.

[Mazza3]

It's like a game of tennis.  Openreach bat you back to BT as they are your communications provider!

[iniltous]

Unless you want to pay for the reroute of the dropwire, both OR and BT understandably won’t be interested in what you are suggesting , rerouting the wire for free as a preventative measure, irrespective of the history of it being interfered with , if the line is deliberately brought down by a neighbour again, although that’s service affecting, it’s the obvious time to ask the Openreach engineer that turns up to restore service, if it’s possible (and desirable ) to reinstate the dropwire in such a way that the neighbour cannot interfere with it again , then there is no reason why the OR tech wouldn’t oblige in putting it back that way  if it’s feasible, but unless you pay for a shift , then there is no way it could be done proactively , it would have to be reactively using the fault report as the driver for the work .

[Mazza3]

I hear what you're saying but a new pole would need to be erected before the dropwire could be rerouted.

We'll see what the response is next time.

[iniltous]

‘Apparently the line used to come direct from the road to my mother's property, therefore not crossing a neighbouring property.’
This kind of suggests that the alternative dropwire route was available without the need for a new pole , if a new pole is needed then obviously the tech who turns up won’t have any choice but to restore the service as it was .