of american broadband industry telecommunications founded 1955 headquarters maitland mo united states key people shawn w. hanson president & general manager products local telephone service parent rbj 1992 2007 american broadband 2007 present website http www.klmtel.net k.l.m. telephone company is a rural telecommunications provider based in rich hill missouri . consisting mainly of small rural family run telephone companies it absorbed it provides local telephone service to 1400 southwest missouri telephone customers in deerfield metz rich hill and richards . 1 it is owned by american broadband . contents 1 history 1.1 formation & expansion 1.2 rbj corporation 1.3 american broadband 2 today 3 references 4 external links history edit formation & expansion edit klm telephone company began in 1955 as a business investment by ken kern . he purchased the rich hill telephone company which had been owned by the shopper family of rich hill since 1941 . the name klm came into being when kern asked a college student raleigh masur if he would like to join in on running the venture ; james lamble later joined . rich hill telephone company was then renamed klm telephone company representing kern lamble mauser . the partners formed a holding company for the telephone company called klm corporation . james lamble resigned from the company in 1957 . mr. kern continued to teach until 1962 when he moved to rich hill mo and assumed the day to day management of the company . raleigh mauser sold his shares in the corporation and partnership to kern in january 1965 . deerfield mo near richards mo was still a mutual exchange in 1971 with magneto service . some customers within the area petitioned the missouri public service commission for bell telephone service because they wanted dial telephone service . mr. kern made arrangements to rent some stromberg carlson equipment and plowed cable through the winter of 1972 . the deerfield area was converted to dial within six months . missouri union telephone company deerfield s service provider was merged into the klm telephone company in 1973 . by 1975 klm telephone company consisted of the merged operations of the following acquired telephone companies family run operations rich hill telephone company 1955 papinville mo telephone operations 1956 metz mo and richards mo telephone exchanges 1959 managed as a separate partnership missouri union telephone company missouri union telephone company fully absorbed in 1973 on december 21 1987 all klm exchanges were converted to digital . call waiting and touch tone dial finally became available to klm customers . ken kern died on february 10 1990 . his widow cathy continued to operate klm corporation until she sold it to the rbj corp. on december 23 1992 . 2 rbj corporation edit the copsey family of rich hill ran the rbj corp. rbj stands for reese bruce and jennifer . evan copsey ran the corporation . in 1999 klm customers were finally able to choose their long distance providers thanks to a switching equipment upgrade in klm s central offices . american broadband edit in november 2007 rbj corp. was purchased by american broadband . 3 klm telephone then became one of the operating companies to comprise abb s business unit american broadband missouri . today edit klm telephone company operates in bates county missouri and vernon county missouri . the berry company publishes telephone directories for klm . klm telephone company is managed by shawn w. hanson from maitland missouri as are the other american broadband operations in missouri . references edit telcodata.us k l m telephone company accessed april 27 2012 history klm telephone company klmtel.net . accessed april 27 2012 . american broadband acquires copsey family telephone operations november 29 2007 external links edit american broadband missouri retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title klm telephone & oldid 731104980 categories telecommunications companies of the united statescompanies based in missouricommunications in missouricompanies established in 1955 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 23 july 2016 at 00 32 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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