"Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the ability to make voice calls over an Internet connection instead of over a fixed line, is already making it as easy to communicate with someone on the other side of the world as it would have been if they were sitting across the desk from you," says Mitchell Barker, founder and CEO of WhichVoIP.co.za, a directory website containing a comprehensive list of South Africa's top VoIP providers. "Since it is far more cost effective to make calls over the Internet rather than having calls routed over a telephone network, an increasing amount of businesses and even corporations around the world are switching to VoIP solutions to address their telecommunications needs, without having to sacrifice any call quality."
But resorting to a less expensive option does not mean that users are sacrificing any call quality, Barker points out. "In fact, the clarity of the calls has greatly improved over the past decade - no more tinny audio and annoying echoes - and these days it matches the quality of the Public-Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) so much, that many users are not able to tell the difference at all."
This is why VoIP has entered the conference room as well, with conference bridging being offered to enterprise clients by many VoIP providers these days. But what exactly is a conference bridge? Bryan Driessel, MD of Voice and Data explains.
"It is effectively a software application as part of our core switching infrastructure that allows a large amount of people to connect to it at the same time and talk to one another over the phone and participate in conference calls. The bridge acts like a telephone operator which can answer many calls simultaneously".
Several callers connect to the conference call via the bridge - by calling a specific number and giving a security code. This is far more convenient than before, and businesses can achieve significant cost savings as in the past a single person had to contact all the participants before launching the conference.
"Some conference bridges may even make that setup step unnecessary, and instead use the system's auto-dialer functionality, which can be programmed to automatically contact all the conference call participants to connect at the same time," Driessel says. "Companies can opt to buy their own bridges, but it is expensive and the technology can be complex, especially when you regularly call large amounts of people."
According to Barker, it is far more advisable to find a VoIP provider which supplies or supplements conferencing as part of its service and can operate the calls for you. "That way, you won't have to worry about maintaining the system either. Instead, you can focus on the important business at hand, which is why you want to call a phone meeting in the first place!"
