Products & Services
Telephone Systems
Note (11/13/2026):
Access America is in the
process of discontinuing
telephone services. Please
call us for help migrating
your service to a new
provider. We will continue
to provide telephone systems
and installation and wiring
services as well as helping
you with your VoIP services
at your new carrier.
See Announcement to the
right.
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Access America--a
local company with over 44 years of experience in telephones...and we answer the phone when you call!
Access
America no longer provides local and long distance telephone service to
new customers and we are transitioning our customers to other providers
(see Announcement below). We will continue to provide on-premise
telephone systems where the customers obtain their telephone service
from other carriers. Until recently, we were a facilities-based
local & long distance carrier
providing state-of-the-art telecommunications since 1982. Our
corporate headquarters is located in Oak Ridge, TN. Our
experienced customer service staff and local presence allow us to
quickly respond to customer's inquiries. Our broad
telecommunications knowledge provides the ability to tailor phone
systems to your needs. Call Access America for your business
telephone systems needs at 865-482-2140 Products:
- Telephone Systems
Vodavi STSe, Vertical SBX, and Vertical Summit
Hosted PBX VoIP phone systems in conjunction with outside carriers
- Website Hosting and Email
Announcement about changes in the telephone industry:
IMMINENT - PLEASE MIGRATE YOUR SERVICES TO AVOID SERVICE INTERRUPTION!
Access America is discontinuing telephone services. The FCC has
ordered the United States to transition from traditional copper
telephone lines to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology for
voice conversations. The AT&T CEO in a recent interview said
they are decommissioning and, in some cases, physically removing copper
from service. Most of our customers are in the the process of
migrating away from copper telephone lines over to VoIP. Note
that VoIP requires a high quality internet connection. Please
make it a priority to move your service very soon to another service
provider. We can help you migrate to another provider, just call us at
865-482-2140.
Background. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) initally
issued an order on August 2, 2019, order 19-72
(https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-grants-relief-outdated-burdensome-phone-industry-regulations)
for all telephone customers in the United States to migrate from copper
telephone services (Plain Old Telephone Service, POTS) to cellular
service or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. The
implementation of the order was delayed in part due to the Covid-19
pandemic. In July and August, 2025, the FCC proposed new, more
extensive rules that were adopted in March, 2026, order 26-19
(https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-26-19A1.pdf) to allow
incumbent carriers such as AT&T to grandfather and/or retire
existing copper services. Starting in March, AT&T and other
carriers have accelerated their retirement of the copper telephone
lines in Tennessee and is moving as rapidly as possible to discontinue
copper-based telephone services in Tennessee. The FCC's goal is
to have the entire United States off of POTS services by the end of
2028.
In response, at Access America, we have decided to discontinue our
telephone services and have been helping our customers move to new VoIP
services or to cellular services. VoIP services are lower margin
than traditional telephone service and there are many
competitors. As such, the business model for us to continue to do
telephone services as an over the top provider (OTT, where the customer
obtains an internet connection from a provider and Access America
provides the VoIP service) is not a truly viable one given the current
regulatory environment while trying to continue on a small scale as a
small business providing a highly customer-focused service such as we
have provided over the decades since 1982. We will still continue
to help maintain the on-premise telephone systems that have installed
and will provide networking support and support for MACDs
(moves/adds/changes/deletes). It should be noted that we believe
the FCC's zeal for VoIP is short-sighted as many customers have
services that are not well-served by VoIP. Services such as FAX
lines, alarm lines, and elevator lines are examples of telephone lines
that the services aren't easily replicated with the same reliability
over VoIP. In addition, VoIP lines do not generally provide the
same quality of voice as traditional telephone lines and VoIP is
subject to the quality of the internet connection and so delays,
garbled speech, jitter and talking over one another in a conversation
are common occurrences. However, the FCC is determined and, since
our business for over forty years has been based on providing telephone
service over copper, it is clear that, with the current regulatory
framework, it is time for Access America to exit that business.
Thank you to all of our customers over the years, you have provided us
with much joy and it has truly been a pleasure serving you.
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