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Potentially Fatal – UK Broadband Firm Erects Steel Mast Next to High Voltage Cables

Saturday, Nov 30th, 2024 (7:30 am) - Score 15,200
Electricity-North-West-image-of-metal-broadband-pole-News-PR-291124

Energy provider Electricity North West (ENW) has said its engineers were “left speechless” after discovering that a telecoms operator in the Lancashire (England) town of Burnley had erected a steel mast “just one metre away” from 132,000-volt overhead electricity lines. “One wrong move could have resulted in a death,” said ENW.

The “potentially fatal” situation in Burnley is said to have been discovered on Wednesday by ENW’s “tree cutting teams“, who were carrying out maintenance in the area. The team reported the situation immediately, and engineers attended the Kiddrow Lane site and quickly made the decision to switch out and earth the circuit for safety reasons. No customers were without power as a result.

You’d think that even the most basic understanding of science and electricity, the sort children tend to learn at the youngest of ages and that we all carry through our lives, would have avoided such a Darwin Awards level error of safety competence. But clearly, in this case, something has gone shockingly wrong, and we can all thank our lucky sparks stars that no lives were lost.

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As ENW states, the 132,000-volt network is the highest voltage they operate at. By comparison, even the standard 230 volts in a domestic property is more than enough to kill. Suffice to say, engineering standards require any assets to be several meters away from the 132kV network due to the possibility of the electricity jumping. At such high voltages, electricity can jump up to 3 meters through the air to a conducting material (e.g. like a tall steel mast!), making it live.

Paul Killilea, Electricity North West’s Asset and Investment Director, said:

“The incident seen in Burnley is incredibly serious and one that without a doubt could have been avoided.

I cannot stress enough that one wrong move could have resulted in a death. People need to be aware of their surroundings, particularly if they’re erecting steel poles, scaffolding or even ladders anywhere near our network.

Taking a moment can make all the difference, if you are unsure, pick up the phone and call us. We are more than happy to help and ensure work is carried out safely when in close proximity to the network.”

ENW added that their engineers remained on site until the installer attended and within several hours, the pole was taken down. Surprisingly, the release doesn’t state who the “installer” was, although the mast looks almost identical (example) to the smaller, more discreet, ones that IX Wireless (6Gi / Opus Broadband) are sometimes known to have been erecting around the town (they also deploy a much larger mast in other locations).

However, it is possible that IXW may not be the only telecoms operator using these in the area, so we’ve shot off a comment request to their press contact in the hope of gaining some official clarification. Anybody who sees anything dangerous in or around the power network should call their local network operator on 105.

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
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31 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo someone says:

    If you have the street details a quick search on Street Manager or one.network for recent permits on that street should identify the company that installed this.

  2. Avatar photo Richard Branston says:

    The distance between the top of the mast and the lowest power line is about 20m not 1m – although the safety point still stands.

    Due to the risk of arcing it’s also very surprising to see an equally large steel light column in the photo – which has presumably been there for decades without anyone raising a concern.

    1. Avatar photo wireless pacman says:

      Good points, Richard.

      Again accepting the general ‘good practice’ points made in the article, I do wonder what the real level of risk actually would be. After all, housing estates (with all their street furniture) are routinely built directly under such power lines.

    2. Avatar photo Mike says:

      Don’t forget the mid-span sag of several metres, plus more for expansion from unusual power loading, and yet more for cor-phew ambient temperature. Then consider the nicely conductive cherry-picker and the angle of the boom arm that day. Suddenly that safety margin has mostly vanished, the engineer is under pressure to restore service, and ….

    3. Avatar photo Ed says:

      20 metres? No, it’s way closer than that. Safety distance to 132 is 1.4m,and those lines won’t be 20m above the road either.

    4. Avatar photo FibreBubble says:

      Way, way closer than 20m. You can get a good idea of the height of the wires by looking at the shadows of the lighting column and the overhead wires on Google Maps.

    5. Avatar photo Name says:

      If it was 20m vertically/diagonally why it was removed then?

    6. Avatar photo Matt Wardman says:

      The lamp post is a bit of a red herring, as the regulation distance is 6m horizontal separation, which looks to be met by the lamp standard.

      The mast company perhaps did not consider failire modes.

      I’m still astonished that these things can be installed in the highway without planning permission being required, especially when the installer companies are cowboys.

  3. Avatar photo FibreBubble says:

    Root and branch failure from Manangement, planning, survey and installers and their supervisors. HSE should prohibit company from operating until they can demonstrate they have a safe systems of works.

    Sadly it’s the wild west out there in telecoms.

    1. Avatar photo IanG says:

      As an ex electricity board employee I just checked my old and probably out of date safety rules. Minimum distance to a live 132kv line is 2.4 metres.

      There is/was a general rule of thumb that you stay a minimum of 18 meters from any HV circuit until you know its safe to do so. The only person that can tell you is what’s called a senior authorised person , main engineer in English.

    2. Avatar photo Witcher says:

      I wouldn’t go that far. One name seems to pop up quite disproportionately.

    3. Avatar photo Khairul says:

      “Root and branch” – pun intended?

  4. Avatar photo AD says:

    They’re an absolute blight to the local area, these poles are. The likes of Burnley and neighbouring towns have reasonably priced fibre from Altnets like BRSK. Who in their right mind would want this wireless fibre nonsense, which is affected by latency and isn’t going to be nearly as reliable as fibre.

    1. Avatar photo TC says:

      You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. Latency just as low as fibre, reliability when the correct technology is chosen and is deployed correctly is just the same. Wireless easily delivering gigabit speeds these days.

      Less disruption, no crap reinstatement of surfaces by contractors held to a price – that don’t give a crap.

      Not to mention the cost per prem passed being a fraction of fibre in area where properties are crammed in.

    2. Avatar photo Ivor says:

      TC – maybe in lab conditions to a single user, but no wireless network anywhere has the capability to rival fibre in real world performance, especially as demand and usage grow.

      or, put another way – why does every single company with significant wireless and fixed line assets (such as the mobile companies) prefer to get their customers on a fixed line connection whenever they can?

    3. Avatar photo AD says:

      From a bunch of cowboys who call themselves 6G, I do know what I’m talking about, wireless connectivity can’t match the latency on fibre and the reliability- have you read 6G’s reviews

      I don’t know what part of the country you’re from but I think you forgot that providers can also use telephones, which BRSK and none of that nonsense you mentioned actually happened

    4. Avatar photo Witcher says:

      TC: PtP wireless delivers better latency than fibre indeed. PtMP such as the 802.11ax IX are using not so much.

      On ‘less disruption’ they themselves proudly proclaim they use their own plant 99% of the time and that’s true, they use their own poles to get fibre to the transmission masts. I’m not sure how much tidier and how much less disruption that is than using PIA as much as possible. Bad reinstatement has to be remediated.

      On cost per prem I think you’ve nailed it. That’s exactly why they’re doing this and why they’ve built as cheaply as possible while avoiding PIA.

      To be honest the loophole they’re using, claim for the purposes of permitted development that a mast is for FTTP and they ‘happen’ to be sticking a bunch of radio transceivers on it as well, should have already been closed. If part of their infrastructure is PIA they should be using it as much as possible, not putting carrier poles all over the place to carry a single cable to a mast. From what I’ve heard the business is pretty unpopular within the wider industry due to both misusing permitted development rights and placing many poles unnecessarily. They should be a fallback when costs to dig are too high, not the default meaning ignoring perfectly usable existing infrastructure.

      I presume the claim is that due to the fibre count of the cable and/or its use it’s not viable to use PIA or to dig. In which case the obvious question is to ask why the fibre count if it’s for FTTP, where are the remote OLTs, or why the use case isn’t viable given it’s allegedly for FTTP when altnets are banging out PIA builds for £250 per prem.

      If rule changes end up coming in to crack down on their build they will almost certainly impact everyone trying to build responsibly. The one thing they have done is show the issues with the regulatory framework and legislation it’s built on when faced with a network pushing the boundaries without care.

    5. Avatar photo L says:

      AD: You’re exactly right, I’ve seen IX putting up notices for works around Manchester right in front of properties that have several different fixed line fibre options already ready for service – absolutely nonsensical. The only reason I can see anyone signing up for IX would be if they are in a leasehold property and the management refuse to allow the building to have the fixed line connection upgraded (which is a much bigger issue imo, internet is an essential service and should be treated as much in the context of a leasehold agreement).

      TC: Yes, it’s great that wireless can deliver gigabit speeds, but the fibre kit being installed these days can deliver 10x that (with folks like Netomnia already starting to upgrade to 50GB PON). Fixed wireless has a place, but it’s not densely populated area that already have fierce altnet competition. Like Witcher mentioned some of these operators are managing these rollouts for under £250 per premises which is incredible value.

      Instead of rolling out their network in areas that already have plenty of fixed line options, these operators should be targeting underserved remote areas where the cost of installing fixed line services are considerably more expensive and fixed wireless actually makes sense.

  5. Avatar photo Loggy says:

    IXW has been building poles all around south Manchester. Firstly we already have Openreach with BRSK and Virgin building genuinr FTTP access, second at least the last link to customers is over some sort of micro-dish (hence the nane) the supply therefore cannot be defined as full fibre or fttp etc under ofcom rules, third I haven’t seen any of the poles connected either to each other or to any households so they are just line metal structures acting as spare lightning conductors which will be a concern to DNOs, fourth I suspect that because of the radiated power of the micro-dishes IXW cannot share the present OR ot other poles which therefore means that their system will always mean more unopposable installations. There may be a justification for this technology in rural areas but in my part of the city they are promoting substantial and unneeded over build at public expense.

  6. Avatar photo Eng says:

    Perhaps the 1M referred to is highlighting a breach in the horizontal seperation distance which forms part of critical safety rules when communications engineers work near HV.

  7. Avatar photo vvv says:

    Really? A steel mast is an excellent conductor, capable of dissipating high currents into the ground. Elementary knowledge is enough to understand that (1) even if a person touched it, human body is a much worse conductor than steel and would most likely remain unaffected, and (2) short-circuiting a high-voltage line would instantly trigger an automated fuse and cut off electricity.

    The construction does violate safety regulations, but it would pose danger only in rare circumstances – fuse malfunction (unlikely), very dry soil, or pole base insulated from the soil.

    1. Avatar photo N says:

      You’ll be aware of the trip times at 132kv?

      Otherwise I agree, practical risk is quite limited, still insanely stupid and must be removed asap.

    2. Avatar photo Mike says:

      Quoth vvv: “The human body is a much worse conductor than steel and would most likely remain unaffected…”
      Yes, you’re right vvv: the body is a much worse conductor. At least a hundred times worse, probably.
      Now you have been reassured, you can confidently stand next to the pole, not even touching it, while 132kV flashes over down the pole to ground. Indeed a bright spark.

  8. Avatar photo Bob says:

    Electricity can arc quite a distance particularly under some weather conditions, How far is safe depends on the voltage

  9. Avatar photo William says:

    Typical woke, red-tape obsessed, health & safety gone mad culture from the incumbent monopoly utility company. No wonder this country has fallen so far behind.

    1. Avatar photo A M says:

      I guess we can send you in to do all the hard ‘unsafe’ jobs then. Sadly I suspect you are a typical boomer sitting comfortably behind a computer.

    2. Avatar photo Nate says:

      If this comment isn’t sarcasm, which I hope it is, then it’s deeply embarrassing for you.

    3. Avatar photo Ethel Prunehat says:

      Woke anti-electrocution coalition is holding this country back. That’s why we voted to leave.

    4. Avatar photo Michael says:

      The woke electricity company?… I guess that’s why they keep changing the frequency.

      I think common sense tells us not to put steel towers near electric transmission lines.

  10. Avatar photo Ethel Prunehat says:

    I had a good idea who the culprit was going to be on reading the first paragraph of the article. The quality of their work and respect for regulations means that this potential horror-show isn’t really much of a surprise!

    1. Avatar photo SicOf says:

      Tackle those in charge, failing to be, guilty of negligence / endangerment?
      Whatever happened to prevention is better than cure, not to mention Brunellian engineering for the future.
      Great Britain, Grate brexit, great social and moral responsibility.

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