Free conference calls

Back in the day of BBS’, one of the subcultures was called HPAV, or “Hack/Phreak/Anarchy/Virus”. Kids into “phreaking” would use various techniques to call around the world for free and one of their favorite pasttimes was setting up large-scale teleconferences. These conferences would sometimes last as long as a week. At that time, conferences cost something like $4/person plus $0.50c per minute per line to operate. For these kids spread out around the globe, hacking a conf was the only way it was going to happen for them.

Fast-forward to today, where old school telecom is a commodity and under attack from VOIP and cell phones. Enter the SMB disruptive technology of FreeConference.com. These guys have a slick web interface for both reservationless and reserved teleconferences – up to 20 people for a maximum of 6 hours, free of charge. The only catch is dialing a non-800 number for access but since so many phone plans include nation-wide long distance, this is a no brainer. They also offer premium 800-number conference lines along with conference recording and transcription services. As organizer, you can toggle between “conversation” style (unmuted), “Q&A” style (toggled unmuting) and “Presentation” style (only the organizer is unmuted).

I used it yesterday as the organizer for the first time to coordinate a 5-person training call for my company and it worked like a charm. Count me in the impressed (and “will use again”) column.