When someone offers you something at no cost, it's natural that your first
reaction is "What's the catch?" So
it's understandable that that was my first reaction when I heard about FreeConferenceCall.com.
But, in this day of telecommuting employees, remote offices and long
distance customers, wouldn't it be great to have a way to do conference calls
without incurring the usual monthly fees and per minute charges? Well, that's
exactly what you get with FreeConferenceCall.com, and yes, they still find
a way to make a profit.
While it would seem that a free service must be routing your calls over
the internet, they're actually using the same land lines that your local
telephone company is using. In fact, the telephone companies pay FreeConferenceCall.com
a fee to route their calls through the underutilized switches on their networks,
enabling them to make money on the long distance charges.
To create an account and begin using the service, you simply provide your
name and your e-mail address. In return, you'll receive an email with your
dial-in number including separate access numbers for the organizer and attendees.
You can then host up to 96 callers, with a maximum 6 hour time limit per conference,
and there is no limit to the number of conferences you can hold.
A summary of your conference including participant phone numbers, start and
end times and the total number of minutes will be emailed to you at the
conclusion. You can even record your call for later playback.
There are charges should you want to hold conferences beyond the initial
96 callers, or if you would like to offer a toll-free
number to those dialing-in. Otherwise, callers simply dial into your conference
at the arranged starting time.
Companies that need to conference with people outside North America
will be glad to know that anyone who can dial in to a U.S. phone number can
use FreeConferenceCall.com. International callers pay only for the long distance
charge. Although, with so many people having cheap long distance, even calls
from Australia to the U.S.cost about two cents a minute.
Alternately, callers are able to use VoIP (Voice over IP) technology to
connect to the conference, potentially making the cost even less, if not
zero.
So, the next time you want to hold a conference call beyond the capabilities
of your in-house phone system, consider giving FreeConferenceCall.com a try.
For additional information or to sign up for your free account, visit www.freeconferencecall.com.
