Over the course of the last twenty years or so, the teleconferencing landscape has changed significantly. It used to be true that only larger businesses had access to multi party conference calling. Such systems were usually rather costly and often had live operator participation on each call.

Incumbent telecom companies priced conference calling services at costly rates (e.g. over twenty cents per user minute) and most corporations were willing to pay these rates to ensure reliable and quality services. Now in recent years the conference call market has seen a high degree of competitive forces. Several factors have been responsible including telecom deregulation, dramatic improvements in web technology and demand for better offerings.

The competitive landscape now consists of seemingly countless companies in addition to the usual suspects Organizations and individuals that want to use conference calling now have a far wider selection of alternatives. Within that spectrum of choices are <a href="http://www.rondee.com">free conference calling</a> offerings such as Rondee that meld free conference calling with web based scheduling and other related features. These services do not charge users because they use a toll number as opposed to a traditional toll-free number. Therefore, such free <a href="http://www.rondee.com">conference call</a> services are not free in the same sense that air is free. They do require minutes of telephone usage.

However, such services are increasingly being perceived by users as essentially free because many telecom plans now offer flat rate “all you can dial” and most cellular plans no longer have added charges for long distance phone calls. Due to these trends, conference calling has become available to a far broader market of users as the following use-cases illustrate.

Non profits have become voracious users of conference calling services. The high cost of travel combined with limited budgets of most non-profits, makes conferencing a good strategy for reducing cost and increasing productivity. Typically, non-profits rely on formal and informal approaches to networking. To the extent these networks extend beyond geographical boundaries, conference calling becomes the most practical method of real communication. A number of non-profits including those that address literacy, hunger, and environmental issues, have effectively utilized conference call
ing to increase participation and coordinate plans.

Labor unions have effectively deployed traditional conference calling systems and, increasingly, free conference calling services to allow disparately located members to talk about strategies and plan meetings. Unions have traditionally been cost conscious due to the fact that their budgets are constrained to the extent of member contributions. So, as is typically the case with non-profits, unions constantly search for methods of making every dollar stretch further. In times of labor strikes or other situations of urgency, conferencing becomes a critical method of allowing the national leadership to communicate with chapter leaders.

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. In other cases, it enables remote campaign workers to work with locally situated campaign staff. For state-wide or national campaigns, conference calling becomes even more essential 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 Iowa received extensive media publicity on extremely well publicized conference calls undertaken to reassure big donors and influential political commentators that their campaigns could survive the brutal pace of the campaign season.

Start-up companies have long felt the same requirement for conference calling as was true for established businesses. However, it was not until the development of discount conferencing and free conferencing alternatives such as Rondee, that early stage companies could avail themselves of the benefits. New companies might use these services to coordinate work with remote developers in Eastern Europe or Eastern Asia, discuss UI themes with graphic artist designers (in the case of Web 2.0 start-ups), or simply discuss work-plans with disparate members of the core team.

In sum, conference calling 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 advent of new business models that the availability of these services has become quite ubiquitous.

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Scott Bailey lectures on and comments frequently about tech related issues. Scott consults to a range of organizations that use communication technologies involving conference calling, as part of a strategy to increase alignment. His clients include <a href= "http://www.rondee.com">free conference calling</a> companies such as Rondee.