I recently purchased a townhouse with a small yard. I want to convert a part of the grass yard into a stone patio, but there are a couple of pretty tall boxes about 3 feet from the fence which belong to the telephone company. I initially tried to offer them to pay to move the boxes, but they came up with a pretty unreasonable estimate (thousands of dollars). I therefore started looking for other ways of solving the problem: I looked at my title to see if maybe the telephone company is out of compliance with their easement. I couldn’t find an easement for the telephone company in any documents. I then contacted a couple of title insurance companies. They researched various documents and informed me that they are pretty sure that the telephone company doesn’t have any easements on my property (one title company gave me a written statement). I contacted the telephone company to see if they have any documents giving them an easement. In response, they said that “The benefit is that the City short subdivision has telephone service. The developer established the location of the equipment and the conduit/cable run to serve the development.” I spoke with the City and I was told that there are no ordinances that would give the telephone company any implied rights to my property. I emailed them again asking for written documents. Now they are ignoring my emails.

Is the telephone company required to have written documents giving them an easement on my property? If so, what should I do if they can’t provide them. How can I force the telephone to relocate the content of their tall boxes to a nearby telephone pole? (something that they had said in the past is possible)