Veco offers to remove poles so underground cabling can start

THE Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) will remove poles to prepare for the implementation of underground cabling, which was supposed to be done in 2001 yet.

The company started removing poles in 2012 in preparation for the 2013 Sinulog. It cleared about 3.5 kilometers of entangled wires (spaghetti wires) at the Sinulog route.

Veco representatives visited the Cebu City Government yesterday to seek assistance from the technical infrastructure committee, which is the body that evaluates application for road diggings.

But the assistance sought is for the City to tap other telephone companies to remove posts that are not needed.

Veco’s project is called Sugbo Matahum, which aims to rid the city of spaghetti wires, or at least, keep the wires properly tied.

Veco spokesperson Theresa Gonzales-Sederiosa said the removal of posts will not cause brownouts.

But if it will, it would be minimal because these are mostly secondary lines.

The implementation of the underground cabling would be a different story, but Veco will work to minimize power interruption because it would also put the company at a disadvantage.

According to the report of Veco, the company has a total of 48 posts. Eighteen of these are for removal and out of that, 17 have been removed already.

There is just one more that needs to be removed.

The Philippine Long Distance Telecommunications (PLDT) have 12 posts and half of these are identified for removal. Only one has been removed so far.

Innove has 17 posts with 11 identified for removal and not one has been taken out yet.

Bayantel

Bayantel and Skycable have two posts each. One post from each company was identified for removal. Skycable has already removed its post.

Digitel has 19 posts, three of which have been identified for removal and none has been removed yet.

For the cleanup project of Veco this year, the company aims to rid the City streets of spaghetti wires while also removing poles in the streets of Escario, M. Velez, V. Rama, B. Rodriguez, part of N. Bacalso, corner P. del Rosario going to Plaza, Ramos and part of D. Jakosalem St.

It’s a total of 8.4 kilometers.

Full implementation of underground cabling was supposed to be in 2011 yet. But City Administrator Jose Marie Poblete said it was not implemented because of the cost.

Telecommunication firms, in 2009, complained of the implementation of the underground cabling ordinance because it costs 10 times more than having poles.