There were certainly BT private wires in Hull when I was kicking around there but they used leased Corporation local loops.

Any chance of a photo to look at, might be an interest on here. Does it say GPO or BT.

the joys of phone lines and things, now late for tea!.

Its a jointing post, and it is still used by bt and will be live, if you open the cover you will probably knock a load of lines off and then get a bill from bt for putting i right if anyone has seen you in there.

Why would I take it apart, never even seen one. If I had around here I dont go taking apart.

Not near hull and don't know where the one that started the thread off is as well.

I like doing my own internal wiring on the extensions and ok did move the master here but pulling bt stuff apart on the street, not a good idea.

Would annoy me if some prat did and my wires where in there that got broken.

I wander if a horse was tied to it then damaged would the horse owner pay, (keep going back to the horse thing that I thought was funny from robert.

Would be nice to have a good look in my FTTC u the road, many time gone past the junction at wrong angle in the car so not walking and could see when they where there. Nice to see what the £18 month goes on, big spender.

Back to watching neighbours.

It was Northwind - the OP that suggested he might open it up!

In reply to a post by RandomJointer:

Hull has never been served by GPO / PO / BT

Errrmmm RJ?

Are you too young to know what GPO and PO mean?

Hull most certainly was served by the GPO, which became the Post Office, which now serves it.

Seeing as The Post Office was never a telco, and in the strict sense of the word, to which you like to adhere, still isn't, I beg to disagree with two of the three acronyms in the quote.

I agree that Hull has never been served by BT.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 09-Feb-12 18:59:02)

My apologies. Hull has never been served by GPO / PO / BT telegraph or telephones.

It was served by the National Telephone Company but a licence requirement required the corporation to buy out the NTC assets in the early 1900s.

Licences were issued to Hull Corporation by the GPO to operate though.

A few municipal telcos held out for a while. When I was kicking around Brighton I noted that I was unlucky enough to be banging my head in ex Brighton Corporation tramline abandoned super small size manholes for example.

The investment needed to run a telco ensured that the local municipal telcos apart from Hull sold up to NTC / GPO long ago.

For many years the Hull Corporation system with connection only, unmetered charges were envied by those outside the East Riding. Coupled with automatic Mercury opt in CPS in the 80s.

However the invention of internet dialup killed the model and LLU systems have bypassed Hull and it is now a regional competitive NotSpot reliant totally on Kingston. Hull businesses suffer for being outside the competitive Openreach network and nationwide businesses face unneeded hassle when thinking of places to locate. .

It's so small none of the serious players cares to unbundle and Hull's blight of mass unemployment and being consistently voted as ' the worst place to live in the UK' is only exasperated by being under the Kingston monopoly.

Edited by deleted (Thu 09-Feb-12 21:31:40)

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

The circular SCP's -secondary connection points[like a small grey pillar ]are redundant but you still may see some about .They are made of asbestos so are best left alone. Never seen one like the photo though ,probably a regional thing..

Interesting about the possible regional angle. This is in County Down, N Ireland. We probably did things differently in our wee corner of the nation, as usual.

I'll keep an eye out when I'm walking around for any others.

Thanks!

I used to see posts exactly like that one in hedgerows at the side of roads when I was small in the 50's.
I can clearly remember my Dad explaining that it meant there was telephone cable underneath it at the depth indicated by the numbers.

I took the dog for a walk in the opposite direction last night and found a clutch of these pillars about a mile away, in the streets near the exchange; again, no overhead cabling.

They are identical in design but are marked "PO" instead of "GPO" ( post-1969, then ) and have four-digit numbers painted on them, such as "1070". Some were located outside houses and others by the roadside.

I think I'll plot them on a map...