Does anyone climb telephone poles anymore? Or, with OSHA laws, is that a thing of the past? (Kind of like, firemen cannot ride on the back of the fire truck anymore.)
Why would someone want to climb a utility* pole when a bucket truck is 100x more sensible?
*Utility poles is what they’re called in the trade. Most have a variety of wires on them and very few are put up by the telephone company.
Now that you mention it, years ago utility poles used to have spikes sticking out of them that formed a kind of ladder for climbing. You don’t see those any more – or at least, I haven’t for a long time. I guess that answers that!
Unfortunately now I can’t get Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman out of my brain! 
A neighbor was a lineman for SWBell. He always used a ladder. The phone lines are generally lowest on the pole, at least in my area.
Yes, they still climb them. By my completely anecdotal observations, power line people are far more likely to use the bucket. Cable and phone people are more likely to climb the poles or use a ladder because they mostly have ordinary vans and fewer bucket trucks.
Cherry pickers seem to be the most common way of accessing above-ground phone and power lines here.
Shame they often also block off a lane of traffic for half the street and drop the speed limit to a crawl while they’re doing it, though.
The one right in front of my house has that ladder thing on it. The lowest couple are actually somehow embedded deep into the pole and can be pulled out to be used with some kind of tool. I have not, however, ever seen anyone* climb them.
*Except a kid who I assume got boosted up by the friend who was standing at the base. Being a grumpy old man I chased them off.
You can’t get at our utility poles with a bucket truck (because they’re behind the houses, not along the streets.) The electric, phone, and cable TV people all use long ladders.
We lower ours from drones. 
I was reading up on Telegraph Poles last week ( and Telegraphy, which predates telephony ) trying to find the earliest use.
As far as I can presently make out they were first erected in 1816:
*The first working telegraph was built by the English inventor Francis Ronalds in 1816 and used static electricity. At the family home on Hammersmith Mall, he set up a complete subterranean system in a 175-yard long trench as well as an eight-mile long overhead telegraph. *
Assuming he didn’t string it 8 miles over fortuitously placed trees…
I was looking it up because these things used to side small country roads showing even in the 1860s a hint of civilization in wild fastnesses where Pan lives.
And being British, we have a Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society.
No, according to my friend Alexander Graham Bell Kowalski they really hate it when other people try to climb them.
I see cable guys using the belt and spikes gear once in a while. Their stuff is lowest on the pole. Can’t do that for the higher stuff, in our case just the power lines.
Same here (Souther California). The utility poles that service residential areas are in back yards. They have the iron handholds starting about ten feet off the ground, which are reached by ladder.
Many back in the day had studs where they placed the lowest climbing hand/foot holds so they could climb without dragging a ladder around. Also made it harder for kids to do as mentioned up thread.
Way back, the poles did not have so many things on them and climbing spurs & belt were easier to carry than ladders.
I had a set to use on tree work back when I could still do that.
Also, don’t the logging contests still have climbing with spurs as an event?
Power poles are not climbed that way much now days.
The cable guy had to climb the pole in my back yard recently. He used the belt and spikes method. I asked him about it and he said it was a personal preference, some use ladders, some B&S. He said he didn’t like the hassle of a ladder, his way was much quicker and easier for him.
A cherry picker would not have been able to access this particular pole.
mmm
A cherry-picker bucket truck is used when they know in advance that they will have to be working overhead. But they have many more repair workers than such trucks.
So if a repair worker finds out that they have to go overhead to do a quick fix, it’s easier to just use a ladder or climb the pole than to call for a bucket truck or reschedule the repair.
Here in the city (Minneapolis), the poles are mostly in alleys, and most of them have climbing pegs installed starting about 8-10 feet (2-3 m) high, so they only need a short ladder to get started. Though so workers seem to prefer using an extension ladder & ignore the climbing pegs.
BTW, because a utility company employee might need to climb a utility pole, you’re not supposed to post signs or bills to them. (The idea is that people who do this often leave nails or staples protruding from the pole and these can scratch or injure the utility company employee when he or she is climbing the pole.)
At one point the utilities were aggressive about enforcing this restriction.
Ex-cable tech here.
The spikes and spurs are still in use, but not that often. It required a special certification to use them, and were a pain in the ass anyway.
They are somewhat useful when there is just no way to get a ladder to the tap, but I would find any way possible to use my ladder, rather than pull out the spikes. I needed to use spikes maybe 3 times in my coupla years there.
“Stranding”, or putting the ladder on the actual wire, and climbing that, is actually the safest way. It is more stable, and once you get up there, you can “tie off” to the strand, and then you aren’t going anywhere, you could lean into any direction, with any balance, and you weren’t going to fall. Those strands can hold cars. I always enjoyed hanging out at the top of the world.
Putting the ladder on the pole was the second option, but that is not as safe, as it is at a higher angle to climb, and there is not as much to tie off when you get up there. You pretty much just wrap your line around the pole, and let friction keep you up there. You really needed to keep your balance, and reaching anything off center was rather hazardous.
Also, there is always a chance that the strand has picked up voltage, and will shock or electrocute you if you grab it. Climbing up from the strand gives you a better angle to test the line with a voltage detector than it is off the pole.
The ladder is only 75 lbs., and you get used to carrying it around on your shoulder pretty quickly, it’s not that hard if you know how to balance it.
Using spurs is exhausting, though I didn’t do it much, maybe it gets easier with practice, and not nearly as safe. If you lose your footing, there is nothing to stop you from going all the way down. My instructor told of many techs that found themselves picking splinters out of their stomachs for a week after sliding down the pole.
Cherry pickers are obviously the easiest, but those are not given to all employees. I think we had about a dozen cherry pickers for over 100 techs, everyone else was in a van. You also need a CDL to drive those. They were given to the “PM techs” which I forget what that stood for, but they were the more senior techs. They didn’t run lines to and from houses, they did actual work on the lines themselves.
Most places, the phone line is at the bottom, the cable above that, and the electrical lines higher up than that.
Bare poles in my backyard. They aren’t accessable to a truck.
I’ve seen a few utility people climb them with spikes.
Rock-climbing when out of practice is like doing deep knee bends while lifting weights. If using spurs is like rock climbing, it is /much/ less work with practice. No more work than climbing a ladder.