My question involves an easement in the state of:Virginia.
Sorry this is so long.
I have spent hours reading this board after registering, and have learned quite a bit about easements and right of way. Make sure I have this right: right of way is the area that the town reserves for roads and the area near them for water and sewer, and they grant the utility companies an easement to place poles and wires in the right of way. I can also grant an easement for someone else (say, a neighbor, or utility company) to use my property while retaining ownership (like the town does for the right of way).
Easements are not recorded for the utility company to provide service to a residence from the right of way (when I worked installation and repair for the phone company, they said it was implied easement, but I found out here that's not what implied easement is).
Our local cable TV company (Comcast) must use the "public way" to hang their distribution cables, per their charter. Since cable tv is not considered a utility, they do not inherit the use of utility easements.
There is a utility pole on the front left corner of our lot. Our power, phone and cable tv drops come from this pole, as do the drops to our neighbor to the left. The power and cable tv drops to our neighbor on our right also come from this pole, and run diagonally across our front yard to her house, coming within 3-4 feet of our porch, and the power drop actually goes over the corner of our porch. Her phone drop comes from a pole on the other side of her front yard.
I have been fighting with Comcast for a month this time, to remove the drop from over our yard, since they do not have an easement diagonally across our yard. They removed the drop about a year ago, but put it back up last month when our neighbor had cable reinstalled.
After a month of calling and visiting the local office, going up the chain to the installation/maintenance manager, someone FINALLY came out to move the drop. They did not come to my house to talk to me. They spoke to the neighbor's (adult) grandson, who told them that he didn't want the installer to go into their basement, so they left with the drop still in place. The installer did not need to go in the basement, he could have run the drop from the other pole to the porch and then under the soffit to the existing cable box. I get the feeling that the neighbor didn't want the wire over their yard, but my yard was OK.
I didn't find out about this until I went to the local office, spoke with the I/M manager on the phone. He said since they didn't want to let the installer in the basement, they weren't going to move the wire. I asked him if their wishes were more important than my property rights. I don't remember exactly what he said because we were both pretty angry, talking over each other. I ended up getting telephone number to their legal department.
Anyway, does the power company have a prescriptive easement diagonally across my front yard since the drop has been there for several years, and if so, does Comcast get to use it without my permission?
I haven't approached the power company yet, I thought I would use Comcast as a trial run, since I figure power would be more difficult. Thank you for bearing with me, and I appreciate any advice you can give.

