AMTELCO History

Bill Curtin founded AMTELCO in 1976 in the wake of the 1968 Federal Communications Commission ruling in the Carterphone case, which struck down existing tariffs prohibiting connection to the public telephone network of equipment not supplied by telephone operating companies. The FCC ruling eventually led to the break-up of the AT&T monopoly in the telecommunications industries.

AMTELCO quickly became a trusted name in those industries after the release of its TAS Video system, the first computerized telephone switching system in the marketplace. The TAS (Telephone Answering Service) Video system soon was succeeded by the EVE system. By the late 1980s, AMTELCO's EVE (Electronic Video Exchange) system grew to become the most widely used business telephone answering equipment in the industry.