Choosing a Conference Phone System for Small Meetings

The more distributed businesses become, geographically, the more difficult is can be – for reasons of logistics, and expense – for businesspeople who need to meet regularly to do so face-to-face. Teleconferencing can therefore provide a convenient, and cost-effective, alternative to face-to face meetings for many business decision makers, allowing them to exchange views and information with colleagues, customers, etc., in a matter of minutes, rather than hours, or days.

Small meetings, involving 3, or 4, participants at either end of a telephone line, can be conducted without expensive equipment or third party conferencing services. It is, of course, vitally important that all meeting participants can hear, and make themselves heard without having to shout, or even raise their voices above normal conversational volume – typically the more natural the communication, the more productive a conference call is – so the quality of a conference system, itself, the positioning of the participants and the acoustic characteristics of the surroundings all need to be taken into account.

Conference Systems for Small Meetings

A typical conference phone system is a recognisable piece of kit; a flat, usually triangular, unit, incorporating a keypad, a digital display, and one, or more, 360° microphones. The photograph above is an example of such a phone, the Polycom Soundstation 2.

This basic configuration may, nowadays, be supplemented by secondary function buttons, a USB connection to a laptop, or personal, computer – to enable VoIP telephony – and/or an ISDN for direct digital connection. Indeed, although perhaps more applicable to larger rather than smaller meetings, external microphones can be added to extend the coverage provided, and individual conference systems can be daisy-chained together. These are known as expandable units.

Other features and functionality pertinent to small meetings include an integral telephone directory, which may provide access to 100, or more, telephone numbers, transfer, hold, mute buttons, etc., and advanced DSP – Digital Signal Processing – technology. So-called full duplex – as opposed to the generally inferior half duplex – operation, for example, digitises incoming sound from the conference system loudspeaker, and eliminates that sound from the microphone input signal. This effectively means that two, or more, participants can speak simultaneously without interrupting the natural, two-way, flow of the conversation.

Many conference systems feature microphones of high sensitivity, with noise cancelling capability, which reduces the amount of background noise transmitted through the microphone; some systems also employ intelligent microphone mixing, which effectively deactivates all microphones other than the one closest to the current speaker. Volume levels can be adjusted over a wide range, +12dB to -12dB is not uncommon, so that a conference system can be used in a variety of environments, and automatic gain control can provide balanced, even sound for callers at either end of the telephone line.

VoIP, as the name suggests, employs the technique of packet switching – otherwise used for the transfer of non-voice data across data networks, such as the Internet – to provide voice telephony. VoIP has become a popular option for teleconferencing by small businesses, not least because it provides high quality, hands free calling, but, nevertheless, is extremely efficient in its use of bandwidth. There was a time when the reassembly of IP packets at the receiving end was too prone to errors to make such a service viable, but technological advances have meant that VoIP can rival a traditional, landline connection in terms of call quality.

In contrast to the circuit switching technique used in traditional telephony systems, packet switching compresses data packets for transmission, such that the data equivalent to several telephone calls can be transmitted in the space required for just one call on a circuit switched network. This presents an obvious benefit when it comes to conference calling, allowing more data, and therefore more conference participants, to be handled at any given time.

Many modern VoIP conference systems can also be connected to a standard telephone line, if need be, as well as connecting, via Bluetooth ® or a cable to a computer running so-called softphone software, such as Skype. Typically, no sound card in your computer is required – connection via a USB 1.1, or USB 2.0, port is a popular option, nowadays – and the simple installation of driver software is sufficient to equip your computer for Skype, or a similar VoIP service. VoIP calls, including those to designated long-distance, or international, numbers may be available free of charge, or at a significantly reduced rate, depending upon your exact agreement with a VoIP service provider.

Conference Phones

Buy Polycom SoundStation 2

Copyright Gadget Heaven™ 2008

More Reviews:

• Choosing a Conference Phone System
• What is a Conference Phone?
• How to Set Up a Conference Phone System
• Conference Phone Buying Guide
• How Can a Conference Phone Help My Business?
• Conference Phone Accessories
• How to Optimise a Conference Phone System
• Choosing a Business Phone
• What is VoIP?
• VoIP Phones