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In today’s business world, audio conferencing is one of the most popular method of communication systems. It’s also widely used in social organizations such as alumni club, and special interests club. Audio Conferencing is also known as Voice Conferencing, or Conference Calls. In Indonesia, some people often abbreviate Conference Calls into con-call.
Forms of Audio Conferencing
There are different forms of audio conferencing or conference calls such as phone-enabled conferencing or web-based voice of Internet (VoIP) based. However, due to the dearth of quality of internet in Indonesia, most of the users prefer the phone-enabled option. It’s not convenient to discuss topics during conference calls when some of the participants suddently hear blank voices.
Three-way calling
In Indonesia, most people are familiar with the conference call features on their phone. Basically, the first person initiates the conference call by calling the second person then putting the phone on hold. Then, the first person calls the third person and voila – all of them are joined together via conference call.
PT Telkom Tbk introduced Telkom Permata teleconference in early 2000 with 360 ports capacity. It’s a reservation based audio conference services. Chairperson who wants to initiate the calls needs to reserve “meeting room” by calling 147 ahead of time. Telkom Permata operator will ask for the date, time, and number of participants, and give the chairperson a conference code. After the reservation is made, then the chairperson informs the participants of the meeting date, time, and passcode.
Capital Expense or Pay as you go
Business organizations that are interested in conference calls have several options to choose from.
The first option is to buy an audio conference bridge of their own. This can be done by buying a dedicated conference call server or by buying modules / extensions to their PABX system. Cisco, Avaya, Panasonic dealers will be gladly to sell business organizations these servers and maintenance contracts that go along with them. After that, business organizations can conduct conference calls up to the maximum capacity on the PABX modules. Alternatively, business organizations with innovative IT department can invest in an open source phone system such as Asterisk. Asterisk has built-in conference calls features. Typically there’s a maximum of 25 ports capacity for these tier one system or open source phone system.
If there is a desire to connect the internal PABX modules to the phone users, then business organizations need to purchase E-1 phone lines from Telkom or Indosat. With each E-1 phone lines, they can get up to 30 concurrent calls. The benefit is that mobile phone users on the go can use the internal conference call server / PABX modules to conduct conference calls.
Due to the cost consideration for maintaining conference calls server / PABX modules, some organizations prefer to buy the service only.
The second option is to buy the service from an outside organization known as Conference Service Provider (CSP). Business organizations would not be responsible for maintaining conference server or purchasing E-1 lines from Telkom or Indosat. If business organizations are new to conference calls or are occasional users of audio conferencing, they do not need to pay monthly fee to E-1 providers.
The users of conference calls may choose various programs from their CSP. There are a variety of packages that can match any budget or business needs. Pay as you go, or bucket of conferencing hours are available to various organizations. Also, business organizations would be able to enjoy the free cash flow by not having to commit to large capital purchases.
TakeawaysNow that you understand the types of conference calls, it’s time that you discuss internally which options works best for your business organizations. As always, we’re happy to help you in any ways we can. Please reach us at info[at]kongkow.com or contact us by live chat at kongkow.com or call us at 021-3049-9504.
