"Telco" and Tom Hicks...

Almost Synonymous?

By Janey Barton

Mentioning "Telco" without mentioning Tom Hicks is almost like mentioning a Maine spring season and not mentioning rain. One isn’t the same without the other. Tom has worked for the state of Maine for 16 years as a telecommunications engineer and retired on May 28th.

Tom developed what became known as "Telco", when the State was forced to create their own internal telephone system after the breakup of the Bell system. From that point in time, the telephone company brought service to buildings but stopped there. Someone had to design the system from that point on, and that someone was Tom. When Tom first worked for the State, he worked for the Bureau of Public Improvements (now the Bureau of General Services), then a separate unit was setup and called "Telco", which was later incorporated into OIS, whose name became BIS (Bureau of Information Services).

He has seen the telephone equipment change from rotary telephones to touch-tone and a mechanical switching system to a Centrex system with electronic switching. This is the equivalent, perhaps, of the change from the Middle Ages to today. Significant! His responsibilities in the early days included a little bit of everything: planning, writing RFPs, finding new vendors, installing equipment, and billing. He has been involved with the telecommunications installations (wiring, cabling, terminals) of every building in which there are state offices. When PCs and LANs came along, requiring data jacks, separate voice and data support staff were created. Tom then handled the voice or telephone side of things, while Bob Corum’s group handles data.

Prior to working for the State, Tom worked for several companies. He worked for New England Telephone for about 15 years as an telephone installer and PBX repairman. He owned and operated a boatyard and marina for many years, and then Tom went back into the telecommunications business, working for International Business Telephone (now Rohm America), as a supervisor for technical staff and writer of technical manuals. For a time he worked as a sales manager of telecommunications equipment and PBXs for RCA.

Tom is a native of Saugus, Massachusetts, and a graduate of Lynn Classical High School, but he has lived in Maine for 22 years. He and his wife Martha live in a home on the shores of China Lake and have two grown children and three grandchildren. In his spare time, he and a friend bought and converted a 40-foot Greyhound bus into a private motorcoach. Tom and his wife have used this motor home to travel via a southern route to California and back to visit their son.