On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:46:37 -0500, wrote:

On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:14:26 -0600, wrote:

When the phone company installed my outdoor phone connection box, they
installed a separate ground rod. But the one for my electric panel is
50 feet away. I'm running my own phone line from my house to another
building at quite a distance. I intend to install another outdoor box
with built in lightning protection. (same as the one from the phone
company). The ground rod from my electric service is 6 feet away. Is
there any reason not to use the same rod? It dont seem to make much
sense to drive in another rod.

Note: I intend to also ground a tv antenna to it.

The NEC requires that ALL ground electrodes must be bonded together.
It is also the recommended practice for lightning protection.
If line powered telephone equipment is the only place here this bond
occurs (incidently) that will be where any difference is reconciled.
Back in the modem days, separate grounding systems was the most common
cause of smoking modems PCs etc

The same is true of satellite installations. They usually drive a
separate rod. You should bond this to your grounding electrode system
for the service.

In that case, I may as well just use the same ground rod.

And since you mentioned the modems, as I said in my original post, the
phone line ground rod is 50 ft from the power ground rod. Being rural,
my only option for internet is a dialup modem, or spending a fortune on
satellite dish internet, which will force me to have satellite tv, and I
dont watch much tv. Every year I lose at least one modem from
lightning, even if the lightning is miles away. I've partly solved that
by unplugging the phone line from the modem when I'm offline. Maybe
that separate ground is why???? Cuz my phone lines are still wire and
underground.