Q. I know there are no telephone poles in Manhattan, where all utility wires are supposed to be strung underground. But how many utility poles are there in the other boroughs?

A. Surprise! There are actually seven telephone poles owned by Verizon in Manhattan, a spokesman for Verizon said. Poles in private backyards or those that hold only terminal boxes, and do not have wires strung above public thoroughfares to other poles, do not appear to violate an ordinance dating from the 1880s prohibiting overhead wires, according to Joseph J. Cunningham, a historian of New York electrical power. Also, it was common practice in the 1920s to run low-voltage phone wires along the back walls of buildings, he said in an email.

As for other boroughs, the Verizon spokesman, John J. Bonomo, said that Verizon places its fiber and copper wires on its own poles, but also uses poles owned by Con Edison, and in some isolated cases, poles owned by municipalities or other parties. That kind of shared infrastructure space is the norm most everywhere, he said. “And you’ll find many different ‘tenants’ on poles besides just telecommunications and power companies,” he said. “You’ll find cable TV companies, wireless antennas, municipal lines, streetlights, traffic lights, etc. It’s a busy place up on poles.”

For the record, the numbers of poles in New York City owned by Verizon are: 103,119 in Queens, 69,391 in Brooklyn, 27,317 on Staten Island, and 25,224 in the Bronx.