Did you know that we offer our customers a free conference bridge with their VoIP system? This is a great perk for our customers and we want to get the word out. Customers who don’t yet know about our conference bridges sometimes resort to using a “free” conference call service. I can’t blame them –free would normally sound great, but in the case of these services, the sound quality and reliability are often terrible. Let’s take a look into the world of free conference bridges and why they’re not as “free” as you may have thought.
When a user experiences a poor quality conference call (garbled, or distorted in some way), it’s usually the result of how the free conference bridge is arranged. These bridges are designed to bring in a serious profit for the company; at your expense! There are a few ways that this can happen.
The first way involves deriving a profit by exploiting an old telecommunications regulation. This regulation permits small telephone companies to charge extra to connect calls which go over their lines. While originally designed to compensate these small companies for the expenses which they incurred while setting up their infrastructure, it is now being abused.
How this works: A “free” conference service will strike a deal with a local carrier to route the conferences through them. The two companies will then split the connection fees. Consequently, the more minutes and calls that go through the local carrier, the more money they both make.
The result: When many conference calls are being routed through a small carrier, the call quality suffers. Additionally, many users will have difficulty connecting. How can you have a conference if not everyone can connect?
The second way is through advertising. When a participant calls in, they are “greeted” by some type of advertisement message. Is this a good impression for your company to present with?
The last way is by using a toll-based number, which results in your participants being billed high rates to join in the conference. Would you want your customers or prospects to be charged to join your conference?
So, if you’re a Steadfast customer who’s looking for a reliable, easy to use, flexible and free conference bridge, you already have it! Give us a call and find out more about how to use it.
Call Steadfast at 212 290-2736
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