TELECOM Digest Editor noted in respose to John McHarry:
As I understand real estate law, such easements for utilities are part of the general law and not necessarily shown on someone's deed. There is nothing to stop the phone, power, or water company from digging up your front lawn to run or maintain lines, whether you like it or not.
Obviously the need to enter the inside of someone's home is pushing the envelope (and probably a waste of manpower time as well)
The law is fuzzier when it comes to newer services such as cable and fiber optic. They don't have quite the same "common carrier" status as the old line utility service. Even established carriers have to handle things differently for new services. For example, when Verizon strung fiber through our area for its FIOS service, they needed municipal permission and they did not provide it universally. I suspect customers of FIOS will see a tiny footnote on their bill denoting a subsidiary company for the FIOS service.
When our cable company went fiber, they installed very ugly big junction boxes on well-manicured lawns in expensive neighborhoods. The residents were outraged over that descrecration plus the new expense for a rented digital converter to get premium channels*. I think the residents had to live with it. The boxes are indeed big and ugly, but the residents go too nutsy over their lawns.
The cellphone carriers tried to have it both ways. They claimed common carrier status meaning they could plant their towers where they pleased overwriting municipal zoning codes. On the other hand, they claimed to be free market if it served their purposes with rates, customer service, and public responsibilities.
*I had HBO but dropped it when they added the digital converter requirement, which was another $5 on top of the HBO premium charge. I think technically they didn't need it, but rather went that way to prevent cable theft. The cable company wised up eventually and lowered the digital rental fee. Customers weren't buying some new channels, so they just raised everybody's basic package price and included them. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You may be correct on easement laws. I saw something in Chicago a few times I thought was very distasteful and very uncaring. A homeowner had a couple of large trees on his property, very beautiful older Oak trees. The Commonwealth Edison Company had some electric lines running from some street pole to a house nearby and the electric lines ran right through some of the large branches on the trees. (Mostly because over the years as the trees grew taller, the branches grew out and encompassed the electric lines.) In the case of one tree, Edison just chopped it down totally, even though it had been growing there for forty or fifty years. In the case of the other tree, they decided to 'save it' by climbing up into it (with one of those lift baskets attached to the utility trucks) and chopped off two or three or the long branches leaving the tree standing there sort of lop sided with leaves and branches growing on one side of it, sawed off stumps on the other side of it high in the air, leaving it very ugly and grotesque looking. I guess it did not occur to Edison to simply re-route their electric lines a few feet so the tree could have lived there peacefully as well. The people who lived in the house did not like it either, and thought it left the tree looking very hideous, but Edison insisted they had the right to do it that way under their easement rules. Personally, I think they should have gotten a good suing on account of it. PAT]