Many people look forward to a conference call with the same enthusiasm as a trip to the dentist. That’s because most people have had unpleasant experiences with their conference calls. Not surprising because large number of conference bridges out there are medicore or people attending the conference calls do not know how to use in-conference controls that may be available to them.

That’s pathetic, because audio conference calls are the most underused but highest value tool for helping a distributed team work together. While we are continuing to see many advances in desktop videoconferencing and Web-based conferencing, the fact is that audio conference calls are the simplest, cheapest, easiest way to bring a group together.

Modern bridges provide a number of features such as mute/unmute, mute all/ unmute all, self mute/ self un mute, enter conference muted, lock/ unlock, loudest speaker display, transfer to private room etc., that can make your conferencing experience pleasant. Some conference call bridges allow use of these functions via use of DTMF keys or via a web portal or both.

Next time you get on a conference call, ask the conference co-ordinator about what in-conference controls are available to you.

If you get a chance try to attend a analyst press conference. You can attand such a call in person or on a conference call. These are calls that a typical publicly traded company hosts every quarter. Usually the CFO and the CEO of the company are present. The meeting starts out with CFO or CEO giving the ‘state of the company’ speech. This is followed by a question and answer session with the financial analysts. During this session analysts from around the country or from around the world can ask questions about the performance of the company. Such Q&A sessons are usually managed by an event co-ordinator. The conference bridge being used to conduct such meetings allows the co-ordinator to tell which individual participant needs to ask a question and then allow or disallow the question based on contraints such as time avaialble, importance of the question etc. Some conference bridges allow an analyst to ask a question in private. The question is then filtered by the co-ordinator for relevancy and then asked in the conference.

Conference calling has become a routinely used service in the corporate world. Companies promote its use as it cuts down unneccessary travel, saves time and improves employee productivity. There are two ways a company can provide this capability to its employees. 

Managed Service: This refers to company buying audio conferencing service from a service provider. Most of the phone companies , large and small offer audio conferencing service these days. These companies then bill based on number of minutes used. The rates for conference calls range from 5 – 20 cents per minute based on number of minutes used. Typically the phone company also provides an 800 number for using the service. So the charge for long distance call is built into the per minute price.

On Premises Conference Bridge: This refers to a company deploying a conference bridge in its own network. The bridge is usually deployed behind a company’s PBX. A TIE trunk is required between the PBX and the bridge. Depending on the PBX and the conference bridge, the TIE trunk can be either based on TDM connection (CAS or PRI T1 or E1) or based on SIP/ H.323 connection. A on premises bridge makes sense when monthly conference usage goes above a few hundred Dollars per month. The conference bridges are sold on a per port basis. One port equates to one voice call. So a 24 port conference bridge can support up to 24 callers. These callers can be in one 24 party conference or four 6 party conferences or any combination in between. 

Owning a conference call bridge also means that you have to maintain it. Modern conference bridges provide web portals for this purpose and are usually easy to learn and use.