What do you guys and gals think about moving a telco pedistal? Illegal, what they don't know wont hurt them, has anyone one moved one before without permission?

first question would be why ?

if it needs to be moved why not let them do it ?

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me

I wouldn't, and I use to move them all the time when employed by Bell.

No point in setting yourself up for legal trouble. Contact the LEC and have them do it.

Ditto to all the above

Bad idea. You don’t know what circuits are working in the cable. You could end up causing problems for someone else’s service if you do any splicing. It has been my experience that pedestals are usually placed on the property line and at the edge of the right-of-way.

Why do you need to move it? Let the LEC move it. It belongs to them. It could be cheaper in the long run.

would you wnat someone to move your phone system?

There's your answer!

I believe its a federal offense if they were to press charges.

Reminds me of a funny story. I was working on a building where they replaced the individual aerial drops with a 100 pair terminal. They also had a contractor there applying stucco to the outside of the building and so they removed the attachment for old drops and just left them hanging out by the pole. Because they were on the sidewalk I was concerned so I cut the drops off up as high as I could reach. A couple were midspanned so they were hanging down over the driveway.

Now, there was also a brand new crossbox on that pole. The stub wasn't even connected yet, that was just hanging out too.

Just up the road I see some of Verizon's finest with a bucket truck. Rather than get my ladder and do something I'm not supposed to I walk up and ask the Verizon guys if they would cut those hanging drops down. They take a look and see the cut drops and the stub and deduce that I cut everything. I decide to play along with these rocket scientists. I say that it was in the way and wudya mean I can't remove that stuff. Then they start saying how its a federal offense. I then tell them that's a new crossbox and those drops are not working. DUH!


-Hal

Request the Phone Company do it. They may very well have an undertaking on file to do that very things you won't know unless you ask. Moving their PED may cause untold amounts of problems for you.The legal ones will probably be the most bothersome. Call the local office and see if you can have a one on one with the engineer. Alof of these guys are real decent and I personally have seen them bend over backwards for customers that are polite.

Good luck!

I agree with all the above.

Moving a pedestal is a bad idea. It is a federal offense to do it. Also if you do move it and knock out some other customers then bell will come after you for the cost of fixing the other cusotmers. Call the engineer as previosly suggested. They should meet you onsite and set everything up.

Chad has the right angle of approach to this situation.

Unless the telco has a very creative legal team, it's not likely that doing this would result in a Federal offense being charged. They would have to pull wiretapping out of their behinds and no prosecutor would waste their time chasing that.

LEC's operate under state-mandated rules. Any legal case other than a civil case for damage would be under the appropriate state's rules and regulations. Sometimes, they are worse than a charge by the Feds.

Regardless, I wouldn't touch that pedestal with a ten foot pole. I won't even put the cover back on one that has fallen off (because their employee didn't return it properly). I just call the telco's repair service. Over and over and over again. The cover goes back on, but it takes about 30 days before my "request" manages to trickle down to the local plant supervisor.

I saw one wide-open and the Verizon repair clerk would not take my request without a phone number to associate with my call. I had to think about every business or residence downstream from that open ped and just pick out one of their numbers to get the order accepted. I should have not even bothered to help them out.

This is off the subject of the original post but sometimes I need to vent. I hope that mgere has decided that touching the pedestal is a very bad idea for.

Ed’s right. The area where I live is mostly buried plant. I constantly see pedestals with missing covers. It’s a real shame. Used to be a splicer had a turf. He took pride in his area and he took care of it. The repair clerk probably had no idea the amount of problems that missing lid can cause.

It is a common practice to wrap a damaged pedestal in black plastic until it can be properly repaired. In one Verizon area labels were purchased to be placed on the damaged pedestal. The label said, “Seen and Reported”. It’s a real shame that a damaged terminal had to stay wrapped in plastic so long that they had to mark them so they wouldn’t be reported again. Sometimes the label had to be replaced due to age.

Thats what I wanted to hear, I had a bad feeling about it and knew that if someone wanted to make a major deal about it they could. The ped is in a small sub-division and is mounted partially in the driveway of a new house under construction. Telco said they would move it, but they would charge 8K to move it, so the contractor called me and asked if I would move it and everyone would play dumb. It is only two 25 pair cables and I know I could move it, but I'm worried about the splice holding up under ground and if there was a problem they would come after me.
Your info makes it a lot easier to say no, thanks.

If it is in the middle of a new driveway, I'd try to get hold of an engineer and ask whether he wanted to move it while it is still in the dirt, or wait until after the cement is poured around it.

I agree with the others - wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Moving a LEC's pedestal is not recommended. The "Don't touch with 10ft pole" is perfect analogy.

I do have 2 questions. 1 How did the contractor irritate the LEC to the point of the 8K quote and how much did the contractor offer you to violate someone else's property?

and why doesn't the contractor reroute the driveway ?

I assume the ped was there long before he started .

The ped is in a small sub-division and is mounted partially in the driveway of a new house under construction.

In subdivisions usually the telco and poco are pretty good at locating peds and transformers on the property lines so something like this can be avoided. The lots are defined and roads laid out long before the houses are built.

So what's happening here? Does it look like the lot lines have been changed or this builder could have avoided the pedestal by moving the driveway? Is the builder the developer or did the developer just create the subdivision with roads and utilities and sell the lots where the owners have their own builders?

I'm asking because the builder or owner may have a beef with the subdivision developer over this if it could be shown that they screwed up by allowing the telco to place the ped where they did.

At the least if the ped is not located with the other utilities the telco screwed up.

-Hal

Had a job installing new system in Dover, Del. last week. The pedestal was behind building, 14" below grade with large pile of dirt around it where Verizon had dug down to get cover off and install 10 lines for my client.The lower half of interior panel was green and rusted from water seepage. The cover would not fit on properly. The landlord or landscaper must have backfilled way higher than orginally planned.I was thinking that my foldup army shovel would have been handy.

I thought that the $8K price tag to relocate the pedestal was high until I talked to a pal of mine today who is a construction foreman.

He's supervising the construction of a new strip-mall shopping center that resulted in major grade changes. They caused an existing 2,700 pair buried cable being about ten feet in the air. Verizon charged the developer almost $90,000.00 to relocate about 1/4 mile of it along the frontage of the mall's property. Much of this cost was due to the fact that they had to half-tap it during the cut and much was done overnight on overtime.

I was going to charge the developer $1,600 to move it. If think telco screwed up because the other houses that were built have all three services right next to each other. In this case the electrical ped its 20' from the drive way and the telco and cable ped's are both next to the driveway. I think the cable Co.saw the telco ped and followed suit. The cable Co. is going to move their stuff free of charge. I called the contractor yesterday and told him that I wasn't going to move it and explained all the legal problems that could and probably would arise from me moving it or anyone else. He agreed and is going to bite the bullet.