At a time when the world is deep in recession, businesses are looking for ways to save money to avoid job losses or closure. One way in which businesses are combating the recession is by swapping face to face meetings for phone conferencing

Phone conference services have a lot of advantages over face to face meetings, for a start flying to another country for a 1 hour meeting which could easily be done over a conference call seems madness, but it is a luxury most companies indulged in before the recession.
When you look at the cost difference between the two, there is a clear winner. Face to face meetings require travel, meeting space and often accommodation where as phone conferences require not much more than the price of a phone call.

A majority of companies cannot afford to splash out on equipment to host telephone conferences in house, so there has been a rise in outsourcing to third party companies. These conference call providers sometimes charge small monthly fees on top of your phone bill charges, but there has also been a rise in third parties offering free conference calls to businesses while using the same technologies.

Free conference calls only require participants to pay their own phone charge while keeping the same quality of service as pay monthly providers and often able to compete with those hosted in house. This makes outsourcing phone conferencing the most valid option for businesses today, often saving