Conference call

Conference call

It’s amazing how the cost of a conference call has disappeared these days. When the conference call industry started back in 1970′s phone companies were charging $1/minute, by 1986 rates dropped to 66 cents per minute regardless of toll-free or toll. By 1989 there was competition among a handful of companies, but the majority of the market share continued to be with AT&T, charging more than 60 cents per minute. Meanwhile MCI 2nd largest long distance company at that time (now merged into Verizon after its bankruptcy,) and Sprint 3rd largest company at that time, was charging around 45 cents per minute. It’s 1989 folks! This was back when access rates were 12-24 cents per minute for rural phone companies. Access rate is the rate paid by one phone company to the other to terminate its call.  For example, if you call from a 212 area code in NYC using AT&T to a 515 area code, small town in Iowa, then AT&T was at the mercy of that rural company, paying whatever that rural company wanted to charge for the call. These rates were established to help rural companies recoup their costs in providing services. Since the 90′s conference call companies have joined hands with these rural companies to share the terminating access revenue, so they could provide conference call services at no cost to the end users and still make money. Until recently, terminating rates were as high as 5 cents per minute whereas conference call companies were paid 2.5 cents per minute. More recently these rates have dropped to 2-3 cents per minute to the phone company, resulting in a 1.5 cents or 2 cents per minute to the conference call company. Now in 2010 yes, you can still enjoy Conference Calls for free. You can continue to use www.att.com or www.Conferencefree.com it does not matter. As we say “you get what you pay for!”

My point is communication – people need to communicate regardless of where the economy is or where in the world we live.

I welcome your comments…..