MURTHY@IBM.COM (Seshashayee Murthy) (03/15/88)
New York Telephone says it owns the wiring in my house. I charges me a rental of about $2.50 along with a fee of about 1.50 for fixing my lines if something is wrong. What would they do if I said that I did not want their wiring in my house? Would they cut their wiring, so as to make it unusable? Has anybody gotten rid of the telephone company's charge without too much trouble in rewiring? Sesh Murthy, Murthy at Ibm.com, 914-789-7840
mw3s+@andrew.cmu.EDU (Martin Weiss) (03/16/88)
Each state regulates inside wiring in different ways. For a period after divestiture, most telcos were allowed to charge a wire cost recovery fee. After this was paid, the owner of the building owned the wires. In PA, Bell of PA offers a maintenance service of about $1.50/mo (I think) for which they will provide inside wire maintenance, but this is strictly optional. Some consultants have told the telephone companies on behalf of their clients that they no longer want their inside wiring, that they were going to install their own. The telephone company can retrieve their wire or abandon it, as they see fit. In many instances, the telco abandons it, because it is simply too expensive to remove. I would suggest discussing the matter with your co-workers and find out what they did, if anything. You can also write to your PUC with a complaint. I hope this helps.
davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) (03/21/88)
In article <031488.150144.murthy@ibm.com> MURTHY@IBM.COM (Seshashayee Murthy) writes: >What would they do if I said that I did not want their wiring in my >house? Would they cut their wiring, so as to make it unusable? Has >anybody gotten rid of the telephone company's charge without too much >trouble in rewiring? I know several people who have done this. The result is that it depends on the service person to some extent. They will cut some wire. They will install an isolator ($50-150 depending on your area). The only person who had serious trouble was one who was mad at the phone company and took it out on the installer. Big mistake. Every vertage of surface wiring was removed, and all the wiring in the walls was either pulled out or cut flush with a wall or floor. If you paint over wiring it looks really bad to rip the wiring out. In general you will only have to pay a one time fee and run 2-4 feet of wire. If you phone company or installer is feeling obnoxious you can spend several days redoing the wiring and trying to match paint. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me