Moving neighbours BT cable that runs on our house

[Ecru]

We recently bought a house and are wanting to do some work on it.

There are a number of BT junction boxes fixed to the front of our house and also some cables that are fixed along the front of our house that serve our neighbours.

Openreach have quoted £9k to rationalise the junction boxes into a single more discrete box and to put our neighbours cable underground.

This seems extortionate to me-is there another way of doing this?

 Any advice or previous similar experience appreciated.

[imjolly]

All the cabling belongs to openreach and they must have had permission for homeowner at the time of installation.  Unfortunately you need openreach to make the changes you require.  Getting someone else which may cause damage to the network could easily cost you even morej

there is no connection from this community forum to openreach

[cooperman]

Presumably Openreach had some sort of agreement with former owners of your house. Assuming you are freeholders of the property now then you will need to delve into the deeds to see if there are any caveats that allow Openreach to continue with any such agreement. If you are leaseholders then whoever holds the lease will have that agreement (if any). You may need some legal advice as to what you can do to force Openreach to remove their cabling.

[Ecru]

Thanks for the advice.

There is a historic way leave for a ‘single discreet wire’, but not for the multiple wires and boxes.

We made them aware of this, but were referred To the telecommunications act 1941(?) that apparently allows them to put anything anywhere without permission.