More Advanced Telephone Conferencing to Cater to Your Diverse Communications Requirements

Today's innovation in the field of communications is conducting meeting over the telephone. This becomes a communication vehicle of choice for telecommuters, remote sales offices, freelancers and company vendors. However, this creates specific difficulties, primarily because participants are not talking face to face. Hence, services offer a set of features to address some of the problems of this business conferencing. These innovated features guarantee conference organizers flexible and manageable teleconference availing business consumers face to face - like transactions.
Conference management includes:

Call monitoring - this ensures that operator is available anytime during the conference. It allows participants to join in the middle of the discussion, or for other features to be accessed. Faxing - this process allows the head to distribute relevant materials for the meeting. A group of relevant documents are faxed to participants according to the cue of the moderator. Roll call - with this feature, the moderator as well as the rest of the conference participants know who is connected into the conference. An operator conducts roll call, asking each participant for his or her name. Sub-conferencing - this allows designated participants to communicate privately within the call. Sub-conference attendees can later return to the main conference. In most cases, many sub-conferences can be established within any one call. The service includes additional features such as translation services, call recording and call transcription. But these services typically carry additional per-costs per service. Business conferencing services can handle participants ranging from 1 - 3, 000 people, thus requiring an additional feature for orderly discussion. For this large conference with only few speaker to deliver the subject matter, these features are used:Broadcasting - the action mutes the majority of the participants and only allows certain participants to speak to the rest. This relieves conferences of the inevitable background buzz coming from many participants. Question and answer - creates an orderly exchange of information by allowing participants to signal via phone when they have questions. The operator then calls on specific participants for their input. Polling - allows participants to vote on particular issues. By pushing a touch-tone button, participants can accept or reject proposals in the conference. The operator tallies votes in real time for the chairperson's benefit. The result can also be provided in a printed summary if required.

One reason why telephone conferencing services got the broad scale adoption today is its quality. With all the clarity, phone conference has two most popular call services: (reservationless and operator-assisted)

Reservationless Conferencing -this goes for impromptu meetings. Invitees get a toll-free call-in number and an entry code to be connected to the call. They're fully automated, inexpensive and offer tons of advanced features such as global dial out, record/playback, conference lock, group mute/unmute, roll call capabilities and more. Operator-Assisted Phone conferencing -is for more formal meetings requiring additional services and a professional polish. Operator-assisted phone conferences are usually associated with "event calls". They feature customized caller greetings, speaker introductions, operator-led Q&A, etc. This article has been viewed 14 time(s).
Article Submitted On: March 17, 2011

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Telephone Line Costs More Expensive As Companies Hike Prices

BT has recently raised charges for its telephone line rental and call rates for the third time in a year. At a time when household finances are at their tightest, BT have made the decision to increase costs, making the average phone bill jump from ?183 to ?217 a year.

BT's daytime landline call charges are going up 9 percent to 7.6 pence a minute, up from 5.4p just one year ago. The supplier's line rental costs are also going up by 30p a month, to ?13.90. Customers still paying their bills by cash will also pay 60p a month more, with additional charges for services such as call waiting going from ?2.70 a month to ?3. BT have also trimmed their evening off-peak periods back an hour, to 7pm.

The most recent call cost changes will come into effect on April 28th. It is expected to affect the four million BT customers who are not on all-inclusive call packages. However, the higher line rental costs will affect all BT customers regardless of which service they are using.

Mike Wilson, mobile and broadband manager at moneysupermarket.com, said: "We have seen a lot of price movement in the landline market recently and unfortunately for consumers most of the moves have been to increase the cost of having and using a home phone line."

Virgin Media increased its prices by 6 percent last year, and Sky is set to raise its prices in June although it has not yet said how much. TalkTalk also plans to raise call charges by 16 percent and line rental by 2 percent.

"Other suppliers will inevitably follow BT, as we saw with repeated copycat price rises in 2010," said Wilson. "This latest price increase will do little to ease the rising cost of living that UK customers are facing."

Households could face further charges as a result of the provision of broadband to rural areas. "It's true that the telecoms industry is under pressure to invest in the roll-out of broadband to rural areas," said Ernest Doku, technology expert at uSwitch. "It seems though that home phone rather than broadband customers could be paying the price."

Household customers are going to have to take measures into their own hands in order to keep costs down. Customers will need to research the best price plan to suit their needs, possibly moving to a deal that offers free evening and weekend calls, or free 'anytime' calls for those at home during the day. Line rental costs can be saved by switching away from the big providers to a smaller company such as Primus which offers line rental for just ?6.79 a month.

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