Getting HFC cables removed from your property

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › Getting HFC cables removed from your property

doubletop

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Master Geek
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#306049 23-Jun-2023 17:30

My property has had HFC cables to it from the early Saturn days. I moved away and took the service to the new property and when I moved back, I could not get it reconnected by Voda as apparently they didn’t have capacity in my street. I then tried a couple of times to get Voda to remove the cables, without any luck, so gave up.

Now everything belongs to OneNZ I thought I would give it another go so called them today and lodged a job with a very helpful call centre person. I asked for the job number and was told that I would get it emailed to me once it had been created. So far nothing has been received.

Let us see what happens and please join in if you have had any experience of getting the HFC cables removed from your property.

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#3094206 23-Jun-2023 18:25

Previous Threads on this topic

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=304354

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=300696

doubletop

62 posts

Master Geek
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#3094209 23-Jun-2023 18:36

Jase2985:

Previous Threads on this topic

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=304354

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=300696

Thanks I had seen the first but not the second. Both have accounts of being reffered to Chorus. I also saw that one respondant had successfully had their cables removed. i am aware that the network providers sub out to Downers and similar organisations, who then sub out to smaller contractors.

Given my previous exerionce of requests going nowhere I am hoping that OneNZ can do better. In the long term the ideal situation would be the whole network is removed. It is a blight on the Wellngton landscape.

PolicyGuy

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#3094238 23-Jun-2023 20:42

doubletop:

In the long term the ideal situation would be the whole network is removed. It is a blight on the Wellngton landscape.

That would / will cost many tens of millions of dollars, and is I understand the main reason Voda retained and spent money upgrading the HFC network. I believe they were actively considering abandoning their HFC network and letting fibre win, but someone pointed out that their Resource Consents said they would remove and not abandon their infrastructure. The cost of removal was enormously many times the cost of upgrading (to DOCIS 3.0 I think), so they upgraded and continue to sell the HFC product.

It's not like the Good Old Days when they put it up, there's a lot more Health & Safety requirements these days..
I mean, just think of the "Traffic Management" costs to take down hundreds of kilometers of roadside HFC and thousands of overhead road crossings.

I imagine everyone at One.nz hopes they retire before the HFC cabling gets to EOL and has to be removed or replaced
LOL

doubletop

62 posts

Master Geek
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#3094241 23-Jun-2023 20:54

PolicyGuy:

doubletop:

In the long term the ideal situation would be the whole network is removed. It is a blight on the Wellngton landscape.

That would / will cost many tens of millions of dollars, and is I understand the main reason Voda retained and spent money upgrading the HFC network. I believe they were actively considering abandoning their HFC network and letting fibre win, but someone pointed out that their Resource Consents said they would remove and not abandon their infrastructure. The cost of removal was enormously many times the cost of upgrading (to DOCIS 3.0 I think), so they upgraded and continue to sell the HFC product.

It's not like the Good Old Days when they put it up, there's a lot more Health & Safety requirements these days..
I mean, just think of the "Traffic Management" costs to take down hundreds of kilometers of roadside HFC and thousands of overhead road crossings.

I imagine everyone at One.nz hopes they retire before the HFC cabling gets to EOL and has to be removed or replaced
LOL

If the resource consent requires it to be removed the budget allowance needs to be in place because some day it is going to happen. Maybe Voda doing the upgrades was their way of dealing with it in the short term to make their exit more attractive. Whoever owns whatever OneNZ eventually morphs into will have the problem. Kicking the can down the road will only work for a short while.

In the meantime we can all do our bit by requesting redundant lines get removed from our properties.

freitasm

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#3094257 23-Jun-2023 22:56

doubletop:

Jase2985:

Previous Threads on this topic

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=304354

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=300696

Thanks I had seen the first but not the second. Both have accounts of being reffered to Chorus. I also saw that one respondant had successfully had their cables removed. i am aware that the network providers sub out to Downers and similar organisations, who then sub out to smaller contractors.

Given my previous exerionce of requests going nowhere I am hoping that OneNZ can do better. In the long term the ideal situation would be the whole network is removed. It is a blight on the Wellngton landscape.

Chorus has nothing to do with the HFC network. One NZ has to remove it from your property if requested. Call again and make sure it's logged.

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quickymart

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#3094274 24-Jun-2023 07:30

doubletop:

Now everything belongs to OneNZ I thought I would give it another go so called them today and lodged a job with a very helpful call centre person. I asked for the job number and was told that I would get it emailed to me once it had been created. So far nothing has been received.

Let us see what happens and please join in if you have had any experience of getting the HFC cables removed from your property.

I suspect the person you spoke to in their overseas call centre was probably confused and had no idea what you were talking about, probably decided it was "too hard" and therefore didn't do a thing.

Call back and make sure you get a case/reference number before the end of the call to make sure that something gets done.

As to the entire network being removed - that would cost a small fortune but I imagine the day will come eventually when it will happen.

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doubletop

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Master Geek
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#3094280 24-Jun-2023 08:19

freitasm:

Chorus has nothing to do with the HFC network. One NZ has to remove it from your property if requested. Call again and make sure it's logged.

Yes I appreaciate that, the other two posts reffer to Chorus but I know the Voda/OneNZ network has nothing to do with them it is a OneNZ problem

doubletop

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Master Geek
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#3094281 24-Jun-2023 08:41

quickymart:

I suspect the person you spoke to in their overseas call centre was probably confused and had no idea what you were talking about, probably decided it was "too hard" and therefore didn't do a thing.

Call back and make sure you get a case/reference number before the end of the call to make sure that something gets done.

As to the entire network being removed - that would cost a small fortune but I imagine the day will come eventually when it will happen.

That had been my assumption, coupled with any approvals maybe needing to go offshore, even Newbury. Now the responsibility lays solely in NZ.

I had asked for a ticket number at the time but they were unable to give one and asked for it to be emailed to me. I'll be back on the phone on Monday if nothing comes.

It occurs to me that there is an opportunity here to rid Wellington of blight of power poles for once and for all. With the growing dependency on electricity, infill housing, phasing out of reticulated gas, electric vehicles etc, the existing power lines network will never cope and will require a major upgrade. I had read somewhere they were already running at 110% capacity. An opportunity to put everything underground

One of the problems being that Chorus was allowed to run their fibre up the poles, that when roads had already been dug up and 100mm green trunking installed ready for fibre.

Of course, all this requires agreement with all involved and a sensible strategic plan, something that NZ seems to struggle with.

OneNZ maybe best advised to have their own plan for the removal of HFC from the poles before they get sucked into the problems the power networks have. Now they are not financially tied to Voda, they can probably afford it.

Bung

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#3094284 24-Jun-2023 09:18

doubletop:
It occurs to me that there is an opportunity here to rid Wellington of blight of power poles for once and for all. With the growing dependency on electricity, infill housing, phasing out of reticulated gas, electric vehicles etc, the existing power lines network will never cope and will require a major upgrade. I had read somewhere they were already running at 110% capacity. An opportunity to put everything underground

I suggest you go for a walk around any of Wellington's hilly suburbs and think about how difficult (costly) this would be. Many of the old galvanised iron water pipes to individual houses have been replaced with plastic pipe laid on the surface because of the cost to dig them in.

MaxineN

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#3094301 24-Jun-2023 10:37

If OP wants to share the account details and their best contact number via my work email maxine.nesbitt@one.nz I'll see if a ticket was raised, if not we'll get it sorted and Downer will be in touch to organize a time.

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

quickymart

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#3094337 24-Jun-2023 12:03

doubletop:

It occurs to me that there is an opportunity here to rid Wellington of blight of power poles for once and for all. With the growing dependency on electricity, infill housing, phasing out of reticulated gas, electric vehicles etc, the existing power lines network will never cope and will require a major upgrade. I had read somewhere they were already running at 110% capacity. An opportunity to put everything underground

The huge issue with undergrounding everything mostly boils down to cost. When I worked at what-was Saturn many, many years ago I overhead a rough price of $12,000 per km to string cables from the poles, and something like $68,000 per km to place it underground. This was probably about 20 years ago, so would obviously cost even more now.

If you can find a way to stump up the massive amounts of money that would be required to underground all aerial services (power/phone/cable), then I'm sure Vodafone/One would give you an ear for your suggestions.

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notesgnome

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Master Geek
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#3094347 24-Jun-2023 12:34

One extra thing (which is pertinant to both Wellington and Christchurch) talking about putting everything underground - earthquakes.

Cables on poles have a much lower tendency to be damaged as the cable can move and the pole can move. Things fixed in the ground when the ground moves laterally often don't fare as well.

doubletop

62 posts

Master Geek
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#3094526 24-Jun-2023 18:26

MaxineN: If OP wants to share the account details and their best contact number via my work email maxine.nesbitt@one.nz I'll see if a ticket was raised, if not we'll get it sorted and Downer will be in touch to organize a time.

Max

Thanks, but I don't have an account with OneNZ, just redundant HFC cables that haven't been used in over 20 years. I'll be in touch on Monday

Pete

doubletop

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Master Geek
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#3094529 24-Jun-2023 18:36

quickymart:

doubletop:

It occurs to me that there is an opportunity here to rid Wellington of blight of power poles for once and for all. With the growing dependency on electricity, infill housing, phasing out of reticulated gas, electric vehicles etc, the existing power lines network will never cope and will require a major upgrade. I had read somewhere they were already running at 110% capacity. An opportunity to put everything underground

The huge issue with undergrounding everything mostly boils down to cost. When I worked at what-was Saturn many, many years ago I overhead a rough price of $12,000 per km to string cables from the poles, and something like $68,000 per km to place it underground. This was probably about 20 years ago, so would obviously cost even more now.

If you can find a way to stump up the massive amounts of money that would be required to underground all aerial services (power/phone/cable), then I'm sure Vodafone/One would give you an ear for your suggestions.

OK maybe putting all the cables underground may be a bit idealistic but someone did think is was doable as three 100mm green pipes were laid in the road many years ago, soon after Saturn strung the eyesore that exists today.

The power networks will need a major upgrade in the not-too-distant future. If the power remains on the poles it would be an ideal time to rip out the HFC at the same time with minimal additional disruption.

quickymart

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#3094535 24-Jun-2023 19:31

The problem is they're separate networks with separate owners. I know Chorus often works with Vector in parts of Auckland where undergrounding is happening, I guess the same thing could happen in Wellington?

As to the conduit, the issue there is each company has its own - Chorus can't put their fibre lines through a TCL/Vodafone/One NZ conduit (and vice versa). What happens if there's a fault and no one from the conduit-owning company is available to open the conduit to look inside? At least if it's Chorus fibre (for example) the techs can go in and look inside as it's their network inside their conduit...hopefully I've made sense there?

If it's really three green pipes as you describe, it sounds like they would be Telecom/Spark/Chorus conduits. If the TCL cable was going to be undergrounded, all new conduits for the cable lines would need to laid underground as well.

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