Farmer Jim Thomson said Chorus and Spark wanted to charge him more than $3000 to get a phone connected to the house he was having relocated to his Meadowbank farm near Palmerston.
''It is obscene,'' Mr Thomson said, especially since he had finished most of the cabling work.
A trench was dug on his sheep and beef farm from the building site to the side of Palmerston-Dunback Rd for a power cable to be laid.
To save time, Mr Thomson laid the appropriate telecommunications cabling in the trench at the same time.
The cable runs from the site to the exposed Chorus-owned-and-administered underground cabling, 7m inside his fence line.
The Chorus cabling on his farm was about 2km long, he said.
To connect to the network, a contractor would need to haul 7m of cable from the Chorus cable to a junction box on the roadside and splice cables together.
At Mr Thomson's request, a Spark contractor had visited the farm to assess the work required to connect to the network.
The assessment cost him $80 and he was told Spark would also charge a $511 connection fee after Chorus connected the phone.
He was disappointed with the steep connection fee because he had been a Spark customer for decades, he said.
Earlier this month, a letter from Chorus quoted $2630 to connect to the network.
Mr Thomson said the fee was an ''absolute rort'' and Chorus could charge what it wanted because it had the ''monopoly for copper wire''.
The Chorus underground cabling on his farm was an inconvenience because workers needed to take extra time and care when digging, he said.
''There's a cost to me and I'm expected to just roll over and absorb that but if I use Chorus' services, it's like ''we'll have ya'''.
Consequently, he was seeking legal advice to get the Chorus cabling removed from his farm.
''There is no easement on the title to say they can be there ... I'm like a dog that has been kicked once too often and I'm going to start to bite.''
A Chorus spokesman said Chorus was not obliged to break down the quote.
The work did not include any inside the boundary of Mr Thomson's farm and multiple contractors would be required to work at various times, he said.
The costs varied depending on the property and network circumstances, such as local council conditions and the need for third-party civil contractors and specialists to build network infrastructure, he said.
''The greater the distance, the greater the costs ... Chorus is a wholesale lines company and when network is required to be built we need to charge for the service.''
The existing underground cable was ''probably'' protected by the Telecommunications Act, he said''We don't need an easement if that's the case.''
However, Chorus had removed underground lines at a property at the request of landowners.
''This is sometimes chargeable to the customer or Chorus pick up the tab,'' he said.
A Spark spokeswoman said the connection fee depended on the cost to connect the customer.
''Palmerston is in a lower-density area. The cost for us to connect the Thomsons is substantially more than that of a higher-density area due to factors such as greater travel required for technicians to complete these connections.''
The cost for new connections varied greatly and often in less populated areas the cost was more than what Spark quoted.
''However, we fully appreciate that our customers need and prefer price certainty so we have developed different cost structures based on the density level of a particular area that reflects the average cost to us for the install.''
