Pole climbing over here in New Zealand was never really a thing.
If you needed to get up a pole carrying 400/230V lines, you used an extension- type
pole ladder.
The same if you needed access to the 11kV lines above the LV lines.
Once bucket trucks happened on the scene in the 80's, use of pole ladders was confined to line crews moving stuff on poles during pole change-overs and faults staff replacing pole-top fuses.
Considering that wooden poles here all have pole steps on them for the higher voltages, you just lean a pole ladder up against them and climb the pole that way.
However, bucket trucks have pretty much taken the need to climb poles at all, due to Health and Safety legislation.
