The phone company ran a temporary wire to my house (many years ago) which was some sort of fairly springy steel. They just laid it on the ground until they came back to dig a copper wire in the ground... a year later. They had to come out two or three times to fix the wire on top of the ground when the rain got into it and it got a big time hum.
When they buried the new wire they left the steel one laying there rolled up, so I found some uses for it. Mostly mechanical. I don't have a phone in that house now. I wonder if I can pull the copper wire out of the ground and use it... lol