Conference Call Bridge
A Conference Call Bridge or Conference Call Service?
There have been do-it-yourself conference call service appliances, called conference call bridges, available on the market for many years. And like the conference call service pricing, the conference call bridges have gotten less and less expensive. So does it make financial sense to buy a conference call bridge or continue to use a conference call service?
There are several issues to consider if you think that you do enough conference calls to think about buying a conference call bridge. The biggest reason to even think about firing your conference call service provider is cost. And most of the things to consider revolve around some aspect of cost. What are some of the costs when you want to do conference calls yourself?
- Cost of the Conference Call Bridge itself
- Telecommunications Cost
- Maintenance Cost
- Personnel Cost
Cost of the Conference Call Bridge - The cost of a conference call bridge can be anywhere from one thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The equipment used by conference call service providers, like Zip Conferencing, is hundreds of thousands of dollars. But if you want to try to do-it-yourself with a lower cost piece of conference call bridge equipment you're are going to pay at least a thousand dollars for it.
Telecommunications Cost - The biggest cost to providing a conference call service is the telecommunications cost. You have to get circuits terminated to the conference call bridge and there is a monthly cost to that and then you have to pay the variable cost of the calls themselves. Even if you don't use the conference call bridge in a month you will still pay a monthly cost to just have the equipment available.
Maintenance Cost - Buying a piece of conference call bridge equipment is just the beginning. Next you will need to pay a maintenance fee to the manufacturer of the conference call bridge equipment to remain up to date with the software that runs the machine. Like any other computer on your network, you will need keep the machine up to date if you expect to have the latest security, patches and features to keep the conference call bridge up to date.
Personnel Cost - And lastly, you will need to have someone in your company assigned to maintaining the conference call bridge. No matter how self service the conference call bridge is, you will still need to maintain it and administer it. If someone in your company is performing this function there is a cost to you.
So, let's say you can pay $.01 per minute for toll free traffic to the conference call bridge. On the surface sounds like you could buy a conference call bridge and save money. The circuits for the telecommunications connections are at least $1,000 per month for a T-1 which only provides 24 circuits. So if you want more than 24 total conference call connections at a time in your company you will need more than 1 circuit. Maintenance on the equipment is going to be at hundreds or thousands of dollars a year depending on the conference call bridge and then someone is going to need to administer the conference call bridge.
You can see how your per minute cost for conference calls can quickly get over $.05 per minute and that is if you do thousands of minutes per month. It is hard to beat using a conference call service when you get the latest features, no maintenance and 24/7 support for less than $.05 per minute. A conference call service provider like Zip Conferencing is a better choice for anyone needing a conference call service. Leave the conference call administration to the experts and stick to your core competency and you will be glad you did.
Zip Conferencing provides high quality, reliable conference calls for less!
