Over the last two decades, the conference calling terrain has changed significantly. It was formerly the case that only larger corporations had access to multi party teleconferencing systems. Such systems were usually rather costly and often had live operator participation on every call.
Monopolist telecom companies priced teleconferencing services at high rates (e.g twenty five cents plus per minute per user) and most corporations were willing to pay these charges to ensure reliable and quality service. More recently the teleconferencing market has been characterized by a flurry of competitive forces. A variety of factors have been responsible including telecom deregulation, dramatic improvements in web technology and demand for improved services.
The competitive landscape now consists of dozens of providers in addition to the incumbent bell operating companies. Organizations and individuals that want to use teleconferencing now have a far wider selection of alternatives. Within that spectrum of providers are free conference calling offerings such as Rondee that meld free conference calling with web based scheduling and other productivity tools. These services do not charge users for the reason that they utilize a toll dial-in as opposed to a traditional toll-free number. Therefore, such free conference call services are not free in the same sense that oxygen is free. They do require minutes of phone usage.
However, such services are increasingly being thought of by users as basically free because many telephone plans now offer flat rate unlimited dialing; and typically cellular plans no longer carry added charges for long distance calls. On account of these factors, teleconferencing has become available to a far wider market of users as the following use-cases show.
Political campaigns now use teleconferencing conference calling on a regular basis. In some cases it is used to allow candidates to connect with contributors or volunteers. Alternatively, it enables remote campaign workers to work with locally situated campaign staff. For state-wide or national campaigns, conference calling becomes even more important as a method of ensuring frequent communication because it is truly impossible to ensure a physical presence. In the most recent primary season, Republican candidates in New Hampshire received extensive media publicity on extremely well publicized conference calls undertaken to reassure large donors and influential political analysts that their campaigns could survive the brutal pace of the campaign season.
Start-up companies have long felt the same requirement for conferencing as well established corporations. Yet, it was not until the advent of discount conferencing and free conferencing alternatives such as Rondee, that early stage companies could avail themselves of the benefits. Young companies might use these systems to coordinate work with remote developers in Eastern Europe or Eastern Asia, discuss design themes with graphic artist designers (in the case of Web 2.0 companies), or simply discuss work-plans with disparate members of the core group.
In summary, teleconferencing is no longer the exclusive domain of large business users. Other possible users have long felt the need but it has only been with the launch of new business models that the availability of these offerings has become quite ubiquitous. |
