For many in business (especially businesses that operate in different Countries on different Continents); the conference call is no novelty and has been around for quite a long time. It started over the good old fashioned land line telephones and spread further afield when intercontinental satellite phone calls appeared. Call quality was not always perfect and, like any conversation where you do not see who you are talking to; it sometimes got a bit muddled knowing whose turn it was to speak. It was also on the costly side especially if not handled correctly. I remember once sitting in Houston paying for a conference call that ended up with 2 of my guys in one building in England talking to each other for an hour over a transatlantic link!
Fibre Optics And Video
Once much of the worlds “phone” traffic (speech or data) was travelling on fibre optic cable; the quality of our conference calls leapt ahead and, as we could now use video; we all had a better view on what was happening. Unfortunately, we had to gather in special rooms at our respective sites so as to be “on camera”; however, it wasn’t all that difficult to setup and we definitely achieved more for less financial outlay.
Throw In The Internet & Wireless Connectivity
These days, all our people have laptops, webcams and internet connections. We still need to get together and conference on a regular basis but we now do it in video from our laptops using (effectively) free VOIP systems.
Just When We Thought We Had It All
It’s hard to say exactly when our mobile phones stopped being a mere communications device; but, the smart phone has definitely arrived and it seems that everyone has them. With wireless internet connectivity; we can do almost everything on our smart phone that we do on our laptop; the only real difference seems to be getting used to a small screen and keyboard. However, the portability “go/use almost anywhere” aspects outweigh size objections.
As if this wasn’t enough; the techies are thinking up new apps for us almost every day and the mobile conference call application has got to be one of the best yet. Not only has it replaced our older system for conference calls; but, nowadays, we also use it for mini-conferences aimed at our customers. We are able to engage with them wherever they may be and they don’t have to travel in to our HQ to be informed about our latest product developments (we can also receive their feedback live on line). It’s great; by the way, I must admit to also using the Mobile Conference Application to keep up to date with family and friends when I am away on business.
