On our court, my side of the street is buried utilities, the other side of there street is not- they had the opportunity, when those homes were built, to underground the utilities for $4K per home but the cheap fools would not pay. Now they have lines over their yards and homes- looks bad. Glad my side is underground. All utilities, especially in the crazy state of CA, should be required to be underground.

Its not just the copper, there was a series in the WSJ last year about the amount of lead sheathed cable still in place on old ATT/Verizon networks that's causing a fair amount of potential harm. https://www.wsj.com/articles/att-verizon-lead-cables-telecom-5e329f9

until you want to upgrade from cable to fiber (say) and the cost is so high the row isn't there and it doesn't happen. Then overhead lines don't look so bad...