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Robert Small
Tony Smith

To many the free conference call has become the standard. The term free is the key. For the past several years many of us have used services like FreeConferenceCall.com, FreeConference.com, NoCostConference.com and others. The great thing about these services is that they work really well and you don’t have to provide any personal information to get an account.

The question comes up is “Where is the catch?” How can this service be free. These businesses figured out that if you terminate a call in Iowa, or places like it, the big phone companies have to pay a fee to the local phone company. This fee was originally put in place to help offset the cost of placing phone service in rural areas. Everyone is basically entitled to have a phone at their house. In the city this is pretty easy, in the country this can be expensive.

Now, all of these local phone companies have been getting rich from the traffic that has been driven to their locations by the free conferencing. And the conferencing companies have been getting rich, as well.

Now companies like Google with GoogleVoice and Magic Jack are blocking some these numbers in an effort to control the costs associated with using these services. And it makes sense that the ATT’s and Qwests of the world are going to do the same. You see they are paying for these termination fees and these fees are passed along to the general public. Although it would be difficult to determine how much this is actually costing all of us, it is costing us something none the less.

And we all know that ATT does not give away anything for free.

Back to the free conferencing companies.

They know how they are getting paid and they claim that is costing us nothing. Dave Erickson, President and Founder of Free Conferencing Corp. has stated that there is no such thing as a free lunch except at his company, Free Conferencing Corporation. You pay to get to his phone bridges and he will provide the conference call connection for free. You are paying through your normal long distance cost, whatever that might be. He as stated that he uses the excess capacity of these rural companies. But what really happens is that the rural phone companies order up the capacity to support traffic from Free Conference Call and they split the income.

Pretty good for everyone. But this can’t go on forever. Just like ATT has figured out that only 3% of the iPhone uses take up 80% of the bandwidth, the same goes for Iowa phone companies. What will come is volume pricing, where you will pay for what you use. No different than toll free conferencing.

Look for it coming to your neighborhood soon.

Bob Small

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