Definition of Teleconferencing
Teleconferencing is how more than two people can participate in a telephone or video conferencing call. They may be grouped around speaker phones or conferencing stations, at two or more different locations.
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Why Teleconference?
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Teleconferencing saves the time and expense of traveling to physical meetings. By including several people in a conversation, it enables simultaneous consultation and faster decision making.
Equipment or Services
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Depending on the number of people at each location, a single handset or a standard speaker phone, or a single computer with a broadband Internet connection, microphone and speakers may suffice. For more than three people at a location a teleconferencing station is advisable. Some residential and business telephone services or equipment allow conference calls as part of an inclusive package or an optional extra, but for multipoint conferencing (more than three locations), you will probably need a teleconferencing "hub" service for all participants to dial in to, or video conferencing software or web service and equipment. A teleconferencing hub service needs to be booked in advance at an extra cost to the call.
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Drawbacks
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Drawbacks to teleconferencing could be a potential need for specialist equipment or services; the lack of personal interaction you get with a physical meeting and the need for conference call etiquette and management to prevent more than one person talking at a time and garbling the audio signal.
Alternative Equipment and Service Configurations
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Teleconferences can be configured many different ways. Videoconferencing can be via ISDN telephone line with special equipment or by broadband Internet. Telephone dial-in to a hub can use any telephone line, cell phone or Internet telephony from a computer.
Benefits
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The main benefit of teleconferencing is that it is useful for a limited number of people to make quick decisions on relatively simple issues where travel to a meeting would be superfluous, more difficult to arrange or prohibitively expensive.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit bussines woman with phone image by Adam Radosavljevic from Fotolia.com
