New article on conference calling
Monday, June 20th, 2005
We’ve just added a new article by one of our almost-staff writers. Since Richard writes mostly in somewhat different areas, we can’t quite call him staff, but we do have a deal of sorts to post certain of his articles here. Taking a look at the evolution of conference calling from it’s basic beginnings as a rather expensive business tool offering by telephone companies, he looks at what the growth of the internet and high speed access has made out of the conference call from the viewpoint of eCommerce.
a short excerpt from the article follows and the direct link to it is:
Originally the conference call was limited to businesses paying exorbitant fees to the telcos. For business, it still made sense economically because the costs were less than the travel costs involved in bringing the people together. Additionally, significant time savings are involved, both in terms of travel time and in being able to communicate fairly rapidly to an extended group. Telcos then extended their market by providing conference calling services to home consumers for an added fee. For some, it made sense to be able to bring a family or group with common interests together easily, usually to plan some physical event. With the expansion of the internet, and in particular, the increasing availability and decreasing pricing for high speed internet access, conference calling has expanded far beyond its original uses…