Telephone pedistals

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Donald Zvara

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Metter, Georgia
My son in law works for a telephone utility as an engineer, he asked me my thoughts on bonding all the telephone pedistals to adjacent power poles, as both utilities run parallel most of the time and some of the telephone pedistals are within 2 feet of the power poles. My question is , since the phone company is just burying fiber optics but it does have a mettallic outer sheath should the pedistal be bonded to the power pole since the fiber optics has low voltage on it. Also every pedistal that is being installed has its own ground rod. Thanks if anyone can help me.
 
Isn't it the NESC is for POCO's and the NEC for us > ?

How do you bond/ ground fiber , isn't Fiber light what DC ?

I been try'n to find a place to state I read an article where their ready to put 60V into low voltage app's... we'll bring the wire...
 
There is no need to bond to the POCO ground and in fact could cause some problems if they did.

Most OP fiber cables I am familar with only have a metallic sheath and do not carry any power.
 
If these pedistals have lights in them then they will be grounded to POCO anyway. I'm

refering to the ' pay phones ', they call them pedistals. Half way thru typing this I started

thinking maybe it's a different pedistal the OP is talking about.
 
Donald,

Is this by chance for FIOS? If so then power may in fact be carried by the cable, or supplied by the POCO in a distribution hub. However if supplied by the POCO, it is just like any other service, other than the grounded circuit conductor there is no need for any direct connection to the POCO ground unless the cable is carried on the same pole.
 
Telephone Pedistal

Telephone Pedistal

Thanks for the response, to clarify a little these pedistals are the ones along the sides of the road that are junctions for the phone company, they have no connection to the power poles except that they are bonding to the power pole at each location wher the pedistal is near a pole. The fiber optics do not carry any power and if they have the old copper in the the pedistal, it carries 60 volts DC. My Son-in-laws concern is that he does not think they should be bonding to power poles that are not at all part of their plant. Thanks
 
Donald Zvara said:
. . . it does have a metallic outer sheath should the pedestal be bonded to the power pole . . .
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The NESC applies to both the power utility and the communications utility. The NESC rules require bonding between the two utilities in order to make sure there is not a potential difference between the MGN (multi-grounded neutral) and the communications sheath. Your son-in-law should be talking to someone in his codes and standards area to get the actual requirements before someone gets hurt. :smile:
 
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