[Tagging] Telephone poles and lines?

[Kevin Kenny]

On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 10:30 AM Nita Rae Sanders <cosmicrae at gmail.com> wrote:
> The few poles that have been mapped in my area (rural farming countryside) are the large cross-country grid feeders (generally 100Kv and up) and a few 9.6 Kv distribution lines. Having said that, it is my impression that 80%-90% of the telephony circuits are buried cables with cable tap boxes every 1/4-1/2 mile. The telco does use existing power poles for drop lines (from a cable tap to a residence) and occasionally strings overhead cables.

I've mapped only power lines that serve as useful landmarks (or routes
of travel - the cutlines are sometimes more negotiable than the
surrounding wood) for hikers. They may be lines of any level of
significance from major transmission lines to tiny local distribution
feeds.

> Power poles (around here) have 4 designated (but invisible to the casual onlooker) segments: The electrified segment at the top, a guard section (in which no wires are connected), a telecommunications section, and a minimum ground clearance segment. The exact measurement/height of each segment varies based on the height of the pole and other factors.

It's not unheard-of around here to see a six-segment pole:
subtransmission (usually 69 kV) and lightning protection at the top, a
guard section, distribution (might be 4.8, 9.6 or 13.8 kV), another
guard section, and then telecom and required ground clearance. That
makes for a really tall and expensive pole, though, so it's more
common so see the subtransmission running on a parallel set of poles,
often on the opposite side of a street.

I'm all for having some way to map multi-use poles and dedicated
telecom poles, but poles dedicated to telecom are not common around
here. Almost always the telecom hangs below the power infrastructure -
largely an effect of the Rural Electrification Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act, which meant
that the power lines were already there. For the multi-use ones, I've
thus far not worried about the telecom stuff and simply mapped the
power line.