Call-Out Conference Voice Bridge

Post date: Oct 29, 2012 4:22:37 PM

Most people use dial-in voice conference bridges. The basic operation is that all the people that invited to the call are given a dial-in number and a conference PIN code. At the appointed time for the call each person dials into the call.

But is rarely how a conference call actually works. Most of the time some people are not on the call or need to be give the conference number and call in again. This means that people drop on and off the call to try and get additional people to join. This is especially common if many of the people who are suppose to be on the call are using cell phones.

So what is the solution to this problem? Well why not have a conference bridge system that will call the people who are suppose to be on the bridge? This would greatly simplify the process of getting every one on the call. It would also eliminate the need to distributed the conference call number and PIN code information.

The process would work something like the following:

1. The host of the conference call would reserve the conference bridge and tell it all of the participates phone numbers.

2. At the time of the call the dial-out conference system will call all conference participates.

3. If the call is answered an announcement is made asking if they would like to join the call.

4. If the person wants to join the call they press some key combination and are bridged onto the call.

5. If the key combination is not entered the bridge will make a second announcement on how to join the call manually.

One of the possible options would be to allow the conference bridge to be configured and reserved via email using something like an iCal entry that includes the phone numbers of all participates. Since this email normally goes out to participates in the call in any case to tell them the conference number and PIN code this does not add any additional work for the conference host.

This system becomes very interesting when you consider that the reservation based conferencing systems that have been around for a while are being replace or augmented with new reservations systems. Since a dial-out system would be inherently reservation based this would be a way to use this sunk investment in a new way. It would be possible to combine these two technologies by adding a reservation-less bridge to the list of the numbers that should be added to a reservation call-out conference bridge.

Another advantage of this dial-out style of conference bridge is that it does not require an 800 number to allow the calls to connect for free. The charges would be carried by the conference bridge system not the folks who were called (unless they were on U.S. cell phones).

This type of dial-out conference bridge could also be built using something like Asterisk http://www.asterisk.org/ could be used to built a system that supports this style of dial-out bridge. A system such as Asterisk would also make it must easier to integrate with email and iCal based reservation system.