Telephone Repair Service and Information

A Couple of Notes:

Due to physical limitations, and, despite what might be said on any given page of this site, I no longer do any actual installation or repair work. Age has, unfortunately, caught up with me.

That being said, I will continue to answer inquiries and provide what help I can via email and the like.

If you need to print out any of these pages, it might be best to try to change the page orientation of your printer from Portrait to Landscape.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my website. My name is Bill Grossklas. At the beginning of 2001, I retired from our local phone company with a little more than 40 years of service. Since that time I've been bombarded with questions about various phases of telephone service and repair. I thought that creating a website would allow me to answer a variety of questions without having to repeat myself time and again. So my purpose with this site is to offer some words of advice and guidance if you have a problem.

Because there are so many types of telephones and telephone systems on the market, I don't offer any real advice on their relative merits. And because so many of them are not "field serviceable" I cannot provide repairs to them. That's something the consumer will have to do for himself based on the information he obtains from the various equipment and system vendors or manufacturers. Each has its own peculiarities and nuances and what applies to one does not necessarily apply to another.

Servicing on equipment is best left to those whose business it is to service them and that is usually the manufacturer or those who did the installation.

That being said, an obvious broken jack or damaged wire is relatively easy to repair or replace and virtually anyone with a little technical knowledge should be able to provide repairs. But, for phone systems, a good general rule is, if you have a serious problem, to contact the vendor who originally installed it. They are the ones who are competent to provide service.

CAREER EXPERIENCE

So what are my qualifications to "offer some words of advice and guidance?" Well, my career with the phone company, i.e., Illinois Bell / Ameritech / SBC, involved a variety of different jobs within the company:

central office distributing frame wiring for all types of services such as POTS lines, business Ground Start lines, alarm and other special service circuits;
residential and business installation and repair, including work on switchboards and key telephone systems;
central office test desk experience in testing simple telephone lines to data, tie line, private line circuits, alarm circuits and a variety of others;
installation and repair of special service circuits such as T1 (DS1), DSL and sub-rate data lines and services (56 and 64K four wire ckts.).
Since 2001, I have become involved in installing stand-alone installations (single computer) of DSL lines.

I live in Elmhurst, Illinois and have responded to service requests from all over the Chicago metropolitan area. If you need help in isolating trouble on your existing lines, whether residential or business, I can probably help you or advise you.

Browse through the other pages listed in the sidebar on the left for more information. You can reach me through the information on the Contact the Telephone Man page. Give me a call if you have any questions.

With kindest regards,

Bill

Some pictures from yesteryear of your's truly --

The text under the pictures is more easily read if your browser's font size is set to about medium.

1964, IBT Humboldt Office, Line Distributing Frame (where telephone numbers were actually wired).

Telephone changes being made during construction of Chicago's Milwaukee avenue subway in 1968.

January 2000 - Replacing a Pair Gain card in an Ameritech underground vault or CEV.

2000, on Thorndale Avenue in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

1969, in Repair Department, driving a 1964 Ford Econoline van.

1973, on the Local Test Desk doing line testing on calls to Repair Service.

The other two gentlemen in the picture above to my left are Carmello Giaquinta and Robert Schumacher. Sorry if I spelled your names incorrectly guys. Send me an email and I'll correct them.

Early 1988 - picture taken by Ameritech when I installed the company's 5 millionth access line.