Category: International Conference Calls

Staying in touch with investors

It’s as important as ever, and conference calls are an effective means of sharing and gathering information. In today’s ever-connected world, it’s possible that some of your stakeholders live or work in other countries.

Conducting an international conference call for stakeholders’ bridges the distance, bringing everyone together in a group audio conference. If you need to communicate with an international group, these tips will help you prepare for holding your next global conference call.

Stakeholder Conference Call Possibilities

• Offer your stakeholder conference call invitees a toll-free or local access number specific to their countries. Our global conferencing plan provides for international access with 150 access numbers for countries around the world.
• Review and pare down your attendee list, making sure that only those who truly need to participate are invited. Think about who actually needs to be on the stakeholder conference call.
• Prepare your materials. If you’ll be sharing documents or giving a presentation, consider using a web conference rather than a strictly audio conference. We offer web and video conferencing that works beautifully alongside our international conference calling plans. If you prefer an audio conference, send any materials and the conference call’s agenda to the stakeholders in advance so they can refer to them during the discussion.
• Rehearse your part of the conference call. Running through a few rehearsals will help to build your confidence as well as fine-tune your presentation. It can also help prepare you mentally for the conversations you’re likely to have during your conference call.
• Make sure all attendees have access to the conference call. If any of your stakeholders are located in countries that do not have local access numbers, you can use our leader dial-out function to manually join them into your global conference call. Alternatively, one of our operators can join these participants into your call on your behalf.
• Kick-off your stakeholder conference call by quickly going over a few housekeeping tasks. For example, you might want to review how to mute and unmute phone lines or let participants know that you’re recording the call.
• You’ll also want to go over the objectives of the call and set expectations for how the audio conference will progress. For example, if you’ve reserved a portion of the call for questions and answers, let the attendees know that they’ll have time to ask questions at the end of the call.

Whether serving a group, corporate, organization, members or other category of stakeholder, businesses can use stakeholder conference calls to ensure their investors stay informed no matter where in the world they may be located such as Switzerland, U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany or anywhere globally.

Holding a stakeholder conference call is a great way to keep investors in the loop. Since you can easily record your audio conference calls, you can keep a detailed record for posterity or share your recordings with stakeholders who were unable to attend your audio conference live. Our international conferencing plans offer an affordable, contract-free way to host global conference calls.

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Most business professionals are well versed in the art of conference calls. Whether using a service or your phone system’s built-in conference calling feature, hosting or joining a conference call has become second nature.

However, when you need to communicate with participants from other countries, it used to be complicated. These attendees no longer need to dial any phone numbers to join your call because when you conduct a multi-country conference call, every meeting guest just clicks a link to join your call.

Here are a few tips for simplifying your global conference calls.

Use “Global Video Conferencing” to invite International Attendees to Your multi-country conference meeting.

If your phone system supports it, and if you only have a few international attendees, consider dialing them directly and manually joining them into your conference calls. This simplifies joining the conference call for your international participants. However, it does make your own conferencing tasks a little more complicated. Fortunately, if you use our global conferencing service, you can pre-enter your list of contacts and schedule a call. If you frequently hold global conference calls with the same group of individuals, you can set this up once and then be set for all of your future conferences.

Establish an International Video Conferencing Routine

Conference calling gets easier with practice. While you may stumble the first few times, you’ll eventually find the sweet spot. Once you find a good time that works well for most participants, consider holding future conferences at the same time of day. For example, if you want to host weekly calls with your remote team, find the best time, and then hold all future calls on that same day and time. This allows everyone to get into the habit of joining your calls every week at a set time. This also helps them to keep that time slot clear, avoiding future scheduling conflicts.

Use our International Video Conference Service

Tired of dialing access numbers and entering passcodes? Though they’re easy enough to deal with, joining a call with one click is that much easier! Our Video Conference plan is free to try and easy for moderators and participants alike.

Use our Global Cloud Based Service with HD Audio Quality

If you’ve ever tried to hold a conversation with someone over a poor audio connection, you know how important this is. It’s even more important with a group audio call with people worldwide.

Our global video conferencing service uses modern fiber optic PSTN networks and not VoIP to ensure that your conversations are crystal clear, every time. With 119 local and toll-free access numbers for countries worldwide, our international conferencing service makes it easy for attendees to join your conference calls. They think it’s as easy as joining a local conference call. From yours, it’s seamless — and the visual and audio quality appears as if you’re talking to someone in your own community.

Additional features, such as free MP4 recordings, auto-generated attendance reports, Outlook Add-in, online conference viewer, and 24/7 live operator assistance round out the service. Best of all, our global videoconferencing plan is affordable and typically saves 60% compared to zoom.

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Global Audio Conference Calls can be productive in 30 minutes or less. We’ve all wasted plenty of time attending meetings and conference calls that rambled on for much longer than they needed to be. Not only are longer-than-necessary conference calls boring and unproductive, but they can also be costly. Costs can include your per-minute rates per attendee as well as lost productivity costs and potential dings to your relationship or credibility if the meeting is overly long and poorly managed. If you prefer to get the message across and then get moving, these tips can help you host a global audio conference in 30 minutes or less.

• Decide on the topics — Understanding the purpose of the global conference call will drive what you talk about. For example, if your call is about new product packaging and compliance with various countries’ labeling requirements, it probably doesn’t make sense to spend time talking about your company’s new sexual harassment prevention policy.

• Duration — Mull over the issue at hand and pick a suitable duration for your global audio conference call such as 15, 20, or 30 minutes. The more complex the issue, and the more people who need to weigh in, the more time you will likely need. Attending a 15-to-30-minute audio conference is doable for most people. Keeping your meetings short forces you to prioritize topics and manage the time you have together on the call.

• Build your agenda based on the desired duration — Once you have a time frame in mind, organize your agenda items to fit within it. There are two ways you could approach this:
  • Start with short, fast updates. In a matter of minutes, you could have the bulk of your agenda items taken care of, leaving the rest of the time to focus on your most pressing issue. This approach is helpful if you frequently find that you run out of time before you get to the minor updates.
  • Start with the most important agenda items and end with the least important ones. This approach is helpful when you want to ensure that the most important topic gets addressed thoroughly.

• Set realistic time limits for each agenda item — You may have a good idea about how much time you need to present your own topics, but you might not know how much time your other presenters need, so ask them. Another idea is to estimate their time and then ask if it’s sufficient. For example, you could say, “I’ve allotted you 7 minutes to discuss the issue during our conference call. Is that enough time? Too much time?”
• By communicating the time limits with your co-presenters in advance, they’ll be better able to prepare their messages to fit within the allotted time. Include a few minutes at the end to field questions and wrap up the call.
• Global audio conference actively managed — This means starting the meeting promptly and adhering to the time limits you’ve set. Let your attendees know how long the call will last and that you want to respect their time. They’ll appreciate a tightly run meeting that ends on time. 
• Note any action steps and reiterate them at the end of the call — A productive global conference call is one where everyone now understands the issue and knows what’s expected of them moving forward.
• Holding shorter, more frequent global audio conference calls is a great way to improve productivity and communication with a global team. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at keeping the meeting running smoothly and on time. You’ll get a better sense of how much time your agenda items require, leading to potentially shorter audio conferences in the future.
• These days many of us are using Zoom, Teams, Video Chat, etc. However, to get everyone on a call quickly without concerns about time of day, personal appearance, or available Wifi, nothing has come along to beat jumping on a quick international audio conference call using a mobile phone or landline.

Learn more about Audio Conferencing for International Communications

Smartphone International Conference Calls and international participants on a smartphone has its challenges — for you and for participants. Even if you have just three attendees in total and use your phone’s three-way calling feature, dialing an international number requires entering your country’s exit code and the other partys’ country codes. You’ll need to determine those in advance. Meanwhile, your phone’s calling plan may not support international calling, throwing yet another wrench into what should be a simple process. You could have your international attendees call you, but that just subjects them to these same issues. Plus, how will you connect everyone into a single call if they’re calling you?

International Conferencing Plans for Low-Cost Global Conference Calls

The best way to make low-cost international conference calls on a smartphone is to use our international conference calling plan. We bill only for the minutes you use — and at competitive per minute rates for more than 150 countries around the world. In fact, you’d probably pay much more using your phone’s three-way calling feature and dialing your international participants directly. Our plan is offered without a contract and with no minimum usage requirements so you can use it, or not use it, as you please.

Smartphone International Conference Calls and the Free Connect App

Once you sign up for one of our pay-as-you-go plans, the process of hosting a call from your smartphone is simple. We recommend downloading our free Connect app, which will be sent to you upon activating your account. You may share this app with your attendees as well. The app lets you start an on-demand conference call with just a few taps. Your participants can tap to join your global conference calls. There’s no need for anyone to enter access numbers or passcodes, nor will anyone be required to dial a lengthy and potentially costly international long distance number.

The Connect app is ideal for both the moderator of the call and international attendees who will be joining the call using a mobile phone. It’s not the only way to join, though. In fact, our service supports all types of phones including traditional landlines, VoIP phones, Skype, or computer access. We have access numbers for more than 150 countries. These numbers are specific to each country, enabling participants to dial a number that’s either local or toll free to them, yet joining your international conference call. For example, a participant in France might dial a local number for Paris or a toll free French number while someone located in Japan would be offered access numbers local to Japan.

This reduces the burden of international dialing and eliminates concerns about how much the call will cost. At the same time, it makes dialing from a mobile or landline phone as easy as dialing a local phone number. If a user prefers to use the Connect app, that’s even easier. It’s also ultimately cheaper for you as calls made using the Connect app are billed using our low dial-out rates.

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The days of trying to coordinate an international conference call via your phone’s three-way calling feature are over. We offer a much better way for dozens of participants to join from around the world. Using a global PSTN network, the call quality is exceptional. Our live, US-based operators are ready to assist 24/7 should you need help. Best of all, whether you use the Connect app or another connection method, the process is easy.

Learn more or sign up for an account today

How to Own an International Phone Number

Are you doing business overseas or thinking about entering a global market? Owning your own international toll free phone number is a smart way to create a local presence in another country without having to establish a physical office. In fact, you don’t even need a physical phone because your new international toll free phone number is 100 percent virtual. Here’s how it works.

1. Start by visiting our toll free phone number database where you’ll choose the exact type of global phone number you need for a specific country such as a toll-free number, universal toll-free number, or geographic phone number. For example, if you want to own an international toll-free number for the United Kingdom, select United Kingdom followed by toll-free or universal toll-free. Your new UK free phone number will be displayed upon activation. Note, you can also choose local virtual phone numbers for specific cities within many of the different countries.
2. After selecting the target country and virtual phone number type, enter your destination number. This is the phone that you’ll be receiving your virtual phone calls on. It could be your main office or call center phone number, your mobile phone number, your home phone number, or any other phone number of your choice. You can change this designated number at any time.

Once you’ve entered your destination number, you can either sign up for a free trial or view rates. Rates vary by country and by the number of prepaid minutes you select. However, rest assured, our rates are extremely competitive.

Own Your International Toll-Free Number for As Long As You Want

Since our international toll-free numbers are prepaid and offered without a contract, you can own your new global toll-free number for as long as you’d like. If you need it for a long-term project, you’ll appreciate features such as rollover minutes and our API on-demand integration. If you need your new global toll free phone number for a shorter duration, you’ll love that you can cancel at any time without penalties.

Benefits of Owning a Global Toll-Free Phone Number

There are many reasons why you might want to own your own global toll free number — and just as many benefits. Here are just a few:

• Quickly set up a convenient, professional communication channel for your international customers to reach your business. All calls are routed over modern PSTN telecommunications networks for the best audio quality available.
• Create a local business presence in countries around the world without long-term contracts or physical offices.
• Set up an automatic greeting and control how inbound calls are handled based on time of day and other parameters.
• Create a menu system diverting callers to the best person to help them based on their language or other factors.
• Start doing business in multiple countries while keeping your operations centralized.

Getting started with international toll-free numbers is easy and affordable. Try it for free today.

The Power of Global Phone Meetings

Did you know that a variety of recovery groups use global phone meetings as a means to provide ongoing support to people (and their families) with addictions? This has become a popular tool for support groups, enabling anyone in the world to get support from therapists and their peers.

Whether you’re involved in the recovery industry or not, if you regularly interact with a global audience, consider the benefits of global phone meetings:

• Easy access — There’s no special equipment needed. Participants can dial in on any type of telephone, from anywhere in the world. Our international conferencing plans include local and toll-free access to 150 countries around the globe. This means there’s no need to remember country codes, exit codes, or calling card numbers.

• Ad hoc or scheduled meetings — It’s up to you how often and when to hold your global phone meetings. If you like the idea of regularity, you might set up your global phone meetings to take place at the same time, such as every other Tuesday at 8:00 pm GMT. On the other hand, if a matter is urgent, you could initiate a call at any given time.

• One-to-many phone meetings — Global phone meetings are great for instances where you need to get your message out to many people. Setting your meeting up in “lecture” mode enables you to give an audio presentation over the phone to a group of listeners who’ve called in from around the globe. Think of it like a live podcast where your listeners will have the opportunity to interact with you once you’ve delivered the message and opened up the lines for questions.

• No travel required — All participants including the host call into the global phone meeting from wherever it’s convenient. Some will join from their homes or offices while others may call from a cell phone while commuting to their jobs on a train or hanging out at their favorite coffee shop. Since there’s no need to travel, the typical expenses of hosting or joining a large meeting are eliminated.

• Uses for global phone meetings range from the previously mentioned recovery and support group calls to international bidding conferences, global press conferences, business conference calls, small global calls amongst virtual team members, global crisis collaboration and response meetings, global church services, and more. In general, if you have people from around the world with whom you need to communicate, holding a global phone meeting is a great way to bring everyone together for real-time collaboration, planning, and strategizing.

• What do you need to get started? An affordable, user-friendly international conference calling plan with exceptional audio quality and reliability. Our global conferencing plans take place on modern PSTN fiber optic telecommunications networks for the best quality and reliability and are offered on a pay-as-you-go, contract-free basis. Our rates are extremely competitive. In fact, you may be surprised at just how affordable it is to hold a global phone meeting.

The best way to determine if our international conferencing service is a good fit for your needs is to give it a try. Sign up today and host your first call in a matter of minutes. No contract, prepayment, no credit card required to activate account.

Set Up a Canada Virtual Phone Number for Businesses Located in the USA

Many US businesses serve customers in Canada thanks to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and cordial relationships between the neighboring countries. While time zones and toll-free numbers are similar between the two countries, having local numbers for cities across Canada is a good way to establish your business as a desirable, “local” company. Setting up a Canada virtual number takes just minutes. Here’s what you need to know.

What Do We Mean by Canada Virtual Phone Number?

Global virtual phone numbers are a type of remote call forwarding that is specific to cities in countries around the world. They are not tied to a landline or building, but rather reside virtually. You can designate a ring to number (such as your main office or cell phone) as well as change that ring-to number as needed. Thus, you could get a local Toronto phone number for your customers in Ontario, Canada and receive those phone calls in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, or any other location in the United States (or the world for that matter).

To your callers in Canada, the virtual phone number works just like any other Canadian phone number. For those in the number’s local calling area, the call would not have any toll charges associated with it. Those outside the calling area, for example in Victoria dialing a Toronto number, would incur the same toll charges they would when calling another Canadian phone number in the designated city. You can also get a toll free or universal toll free number for Canada if desired.

Benefits of Getting a Canada Virtual Phone Number for Businesses in the US

There are several advantages to setting up a Canada virtual phone number including:

• You appear more invested in the local community — Having a local prefix makes it appear as though you have a presence in the community. Many customers do not like calling 800 numbers and prefer calling local businesses. Having a virtual Canada phone number allows you to be more accessible to those customers without the expense of setting up shop in cities across Canada.
• You can control how calls are routed and answered — If your main office in the USA has the capacity, you could set up call forwarding so that all incoming Canadian calls go through the main office. If you use a third-party call center, you could change the ring to number to the call center. Want calls to go to the main office during business hours and to an answering service or voicemail at night? No problem, simply set up “time of day” routing.
• You can set up an advanced virtual PBX system with extensions — From individual extensions for customer service, shipping and receiving, and billing to recorded information, your Canada virtual phone number doubles as an advanced virtual PBX system.
• You get fax forwarding, too — Need to receive faxes from people in Canada? There’s no need to order a separate Canada fax number or buy another fax machine. Our virtual Canada phone numbers include fax forwarding to the email address of your choice.
• And more — Our global virtual phone number plans are loaded with helpful features.
•  We offer virtual phone numbers for provinces across Canada including British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Québec, and Saskatchewan. Choose from toll-free and regional numbers and give our contract.
• Try For Free

Origins of Telecom: History of Call Boxes

Fire and police departments alike were early adopters of technology, using Morse code and telegraphs to communicate, sends alarms, or check in with the dispatch center. After the telephone was invented in 1876, telegraph communications eventually gave way to telephone-based call boxes. You may be familiar with the iconic blue police call boxes in the United Kingdom, but the still exist, take many shapes and forms. Here’s a quick look at the history of call boxes.

Used by Early Police

John Nelson Gamewell’s fire alarm telegraph changed communications for first responders as did the invention of the telephone. In 1877, the first police telephone in the United States was installed in Albany, New York, followed by actual use in Chicago in 1880. In subsequent years, other cities including Washington, DC, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco installed their own call boxes. These cast iron boxes were typically mounted on posts and scattered throughout the city. Within the box was a telephone with a direct connection to the police station. In some cities, police and fire call boxes shared a post, with the police box painted blue on one side and the firebox painted red on the other.

Interestingly, in the United Kingdom, police boxes took the form of an enclosed kiosk with a door and windows. The telephone could be accessed from the outside while the interior was typically used as a small office by police officers for filling out reports or taking a short break. They could also be used as a mini detention center for detainees while waiting for a paddy wagon to arrive. Typical equipment housed inside the police boxes included first aid kits, fire extinguishers, and incident books.

Although police officers used the boxes to check in with dispatch. Boxes equipped with lights could alert patrol officers that they needed to call in for messages. The general public could also use police boxes to report crimes or request emergency assistance. For example, some call boxes used a series of predetermined telegraph signals for different situations such as “thieves,” “accident,” “murder” and so forth.

Modern Police Usage

Boxes continue to have their place in today’s world. California, for example, has 15,000 highway call boxes lining about 6,300 miles of highways and generating more than 100,000 phone calls per month. Bridge phones, which typically have a direct line to a crisis call center or suicide prevention hotline, have been installed on bridges with high suicide rates in an attempt to prevent suicide. Radio and mobile telecommunications have rendered traditional police boxes largely obsolete.

In summary, on college campuses across the country, you’ll find a modern version of the police call box in parking lots and other crime-prone areas. These are high tech, smart call boxes complete with two-way communications, security cameras, location mapping and more.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_telephone

http://www.themindrobber.co.uk/real-police-box-history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_box

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffairs/faq/faq71.htm

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/SUICIDE_BRIDGES_Lifeline_Position_Paper_Final_6-16-08.pdf

Incorporating Micro Learning into Your Web Conferences

Micro learning with web conferencing offers virtual teams a convenient way to interact despite physical distances. Whether you hold regular team meetings or periodic ad hoc meetings via web conferences, incorporating short segments into your meetings could be beneficial.

What is It?

Micro learning is a short — think 2-5 minutes — targeted learning activity designed to achieve a specific outcome. It’s generally a standalone lesson rather than a part of a larger whole.

According to an article on eLearningIndustry.com, the benefits of microlearning include:

• Better engagement
• Better retention of the concepts
• Better transfer to the job
• Faster development
• Implementation on any device
• Just-in-time learning 

Why Incorporate Micro Learning into Your Web Conferences?

Your virtual team could use micro learning for any number of activities such as professional development, soft skills development, or regulatory compliance. For example, if your team is working under a tight deadline, including a session on time management during your next virtual team web conference could be time well spent.

Remember, microlearning, by definition, is short, so it won’t be a huge time investment as far as the web conference itself goes. Allocate 5-7 minutes on your web conference agenda and make it a routine part of your regular meetings.

Consider using a comprehensive remote learning tool.

How to Create the Micro Learning Content

You’ll need to determine how to present the actual content. Both PowerPoint presentations and videos work well in a web conference, so consider either of those mediums. One way to quickly create content is to repurpose existing training content or your company’s policy manual, packaging portions of it into small nuggets of training. You could also assign individuals to deliver a short “talking head” presentation, sharing their insights and knowledge.

To increase buy-in and engagement, consider tasking team members to develop each meeting’s content on a rotating basis.

After the Web Conference — Create a Micro Learning Hub

Record your web conferences and use basic video editing software to cut the session into a standalone video. Upload each video to a private YouTube channel or your corporate intranet to create a library for easy access by current and future team members. Over time, this could prove to become a valuable resource.

Web conferencing brings your team together for all kinds of purposes from routine staff meetings and collaboration to brainstorming, problem-solving, and learning. Incorporating microlearning into your regular web conferences doesn’t take much extra time but could have a tremendous impact on your team’s performance by updating their knowledge and skills on a regular basis.

How to Add an Interpreter to an International Conference Call

Conference Call Interpreter | If you’re hosting an international conference call where attendees speak a language other than your own, it may be beneficial to hire an interpreter to provide interpretation services on your behalf. Adding the interpreter to your conference calls is relatively easy. Here’s what you need to know.

Is an Interpreter or Translator necessary?

Your audience may or may not be bilingual, so it’s smart to poll participants in advance to determine the need. For example, if you speak English and will be conferencing with business leaders in China, there’s a good chance they speak English and won’t require an interpreter. However, there’s still a chance that some participants could benefit from this service, making it worthwhile to check.

Adding an Interpreter Before the International Conference Call

Once you’ve determined the need for an interpreter, you’ll need to find one who speaks the designated languages. If you have someone on staff who can do this for you, great; simply invite him or her to your global conference call as you would any other participant and make sure not to use lecture mode as your interpreter will need to speak.

If not, there are many online services you could turn to hire a one-time interpreter to help with your audio conference. You’ll want to source and set up your online interpreting account before the global conference call as you certainly don’t want your group to have to wait while you take care of your billing details and other matters.

These online services typically connect you to an interpreter on demand, making audio conference invites impractical. Fortunately, you can use our leader dial-out function (*1) to dial the service, select the desired language, and connect with an interpreter. Once you fill him or her in on the task, press *2 to join the interpreter to the call.

You may want to do this a few minutes prior to the actual start of the international conference call to ensure that both you and the interpreter are on the line as your participants join the call.

Conference Call Interpreter Added During the Conference Call

Assuming you’ve already set up an account with a prepaid service, you could also add an interpreter mid-way through a conference call if needed. For example, if you’ve invited a special guest to join the global call at a specific time, and that person requires an interpreter, you can use the included leader dial-out feature to join both parties to the audio conference. Again, you’d press *1 to initiate dial-out and *2 to join the parties to the conference.

These tips are helpful for the occasional need for a single interpreter. If you’re hosting a large global audio conference requiring support for multiple languages in separate “breakaway rooms,” contact us about our custom event audio conferencing services.

Origins of Telecom: Mechanical Acoustic Telephones

Remember making a “telephone” with tin cans and a string as a child? While tin can phones may be considered fun and games today, they were a big deal back in the mid-1800s.

The first acoustic string phone is believed to have originated in the 1660s when British physicist Robert Hooke first tinkered with a conical glass hearing aid in an attempt to improve it. He experimented with various apparatuses and wire to send sound across a long distance (in this case, from one room to another). Using two hearing aids connected by an insulated, stretched wire, he was able to send sound to his assistant in another room. He started by playing a musical note on an instrument. His assistant heard it perfectly. Next, he spoke into the conical glass hearing aid, and once again, his assistant heard him perfectly.

As far as Hooke, was concerned, the experiment was a success. However, all he did with it was make note of it in the preface of his book, Micrographia, where he wrote, “I can assure the Reader, that I have, by the help of a distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light, at least, incomparably swifter then that, which at the same time was propagated through the Air; and this not only in a straight line, or direct, but in one bended in many angles.”

It would take about two hundred years before the tin can phone as we know it made another appearance. This time, the inventor was Amos E. Dolbear. He used regular string and two cylindrical containers. As you know, this is about as simple a device as you can create, perhaps too simple. Dolbear approached Western Union with his device but was promptly dismissed due to its simplicity and Western Union’s interest in a competing technology, the telegraph.

Admittedly, it’s hard to capitalize on something as simple as two tin cans and a string. Hooke’s invention was not a commercial success, but it did find an audience among regular people, in particular, lovers. In fact, the tin can phone is often called the “lover’s phone.”

The December 1889 edition of Science magazine describes a demonstration of a simple wire acoustic telephone outside a railway near London. A wire stretched along telegraph poles made it possible for passengers to speak across the distance using nothing but the wire and a standard hat placed against it. The hat served as the receiver/transmitter, amplifying the sounds from the wire. When the passengers arrived at their destination, a local hotel, similar wires were present throughout the property. These lines included a wooden box at each end that acted as both a transmitter and receiver. This simple mechanical acoustic telephone by the British Pulsion Telephone Company worked much like the tin cans, but included a metal diaphragm held in place by clips and screws as well as a few “resonators” on the diaphragm such as springs, which were thought to re-enforce the sound vibrations.

Mechanical acoustic phones were marketed as a niche alternative to Bell’s electrical telephone but failed to gain a major following due to limited range and increased competition once Bell’s patents expired.

A January 1890 article in Hawke’s Bay Herald covering this same demonstration suggests that the Pulsion telephone would “produce a complete revolution in telephonic communication.” Of course, by this time, Bell’s telephone had been patented 14 years prior and was in use by tens of thousands of subscribers.

Mechanical acoustic telephones are an interesting blip in the history of telecommunications.

Sources:

http://simplyknowledge.com/popular/invention_detail/telephone

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm (Micrographia)

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/ns-14/360/434

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBH18900130.2.17

How to Make Outbound International Calls with Caller ID Override

Did you know you can add outbound international calls capability to your global call forwarding number? This is a terrific add-on that allows you to assign your international call forwarding number as your Caller ID number when making international calls.

For example, let’s say you have a global call forwarding number for important business contacts in Europe to use to reach you in USA. A contact in London can dial a UK phone number to call you in the United States. This has its own set of benefits including ease of use, toll-free or local access, localization, and low costs. However, what happens if you need to return or initiate a call?

While you can use our global call forwarding numbers to make a cheap outbound international calls, your Caller ID may cause confusion by defaulting to the physical phone that you are using to make the call. Not only that, if your contacts miss your calls, they might hesitate to call back due to the fact that it’s obviously an international phone call. They might reject the call altogether for that same reason.

Our Caller ID Override feature, which is an optional add-on to our global call forwarding numbers, allows you to assign your global call forwarding number as the Caller ID number. Now, your contacts in London will see a local number when you call. If they miss your call, they can more easily return it as your actual global call forwarding number will be displayed as the Caller ID. Plus, they’ll be less likely to hesitate to return a local or toll-free call rather than an international one.

Caller ID override can be used by multiple phones simultaneously. For example, a call center can be set up to display the global call forwarding number of your choice when making outbound calls.

Why Add Caller ID Override to Your Account?

In short, Caller ID override is ideal for those who will be using global call forwarding numbers to both receive and initiate outbound international phone calls. It’s a cost-effective way to make cheap international phone calls and strengthen your company’s localization strategies.

How to Get Caller ID Override

In order to use our Caller ID override feature for outbound international calls, you’ll need to add outbound calling to your account. From there, you can select any of your associated global call forwarding numbers to be used as your Caller ID override. If you want to use a number from a different provider, you’ll need to provide us with proper documentation proving your ownership of that number. Once set up, you can change your Caller ID override at any time through the control panel.

Virtual Phone Number Information

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Caller ID Definition

How to Add an Australian and New Zealand Virtual Numbers to Your Global Business

Is your US business ready to do business in Australia and New Zealand? Whether you offer services or import and export goods with these trading partners, having an affordable way to communicate internationally is a must. Virtual phone number is a great way to facilitate communication with local business associates, employees, vendors, and customers alike. Not only can you remote call forward calls from Australia and New Zealand to your American (or any country) office, but you can also appear as if you have a local presence within each country. Here’s how it works.

Virtual number for Australia and New Zealand look just like other business phone numbers in those countries. You can get city-specific virtual numbers or toll-free phone numbers that are local to Australia and New Zealand. Rather than ringing to a local office, you can set up the virtual phone numbers to ring to your main office in the United States.

Benefits of Virtual Numbers 

Everyone benefits when you set up Australian or New Zealand virtual phone numbers. First, your business is able to create a local presence without having to rent office space and staff offices far from your home base. Your US-based employees can easily handle incoming calls from abroad, or if you prefer, you could route incoming calls to different call centers based upon the time of day they come in.

Local business partners and customers benefit because they can reach your office without having to dial internationally. Virtual numbers are completely local to them, so there are no international long distance charges and no country and exit codes to worry about. 

Our Australian and New Zealand global virtual numbers are packed with helpful features, too, including SMS forwarding, fax forwarding, simultaneous ringing, sequential ringing, customized greetings, voicemail to email, and more.

Use Cases for a Virtual Number in Australia and New Zealand

There are many ways US businesses can use a virtual phone number to expand their businesses into Australia and New Zealand. Here are a few common scenarios:

• Customer care — If you sell products or services internationally, your customers need a convenient way to reach your organization for customer service or technical support. Getting toll free or universal toll free numbers for the countries you serve makes sense.
• Import / export communications — Placing orders, responding to requests, collaborating on new ideas, and dealing with customs often require voice communications. Make it easy on your local contacts to reach you with a virtual call forwarding number.
• Consulting — Your expertise knows no bounds, especially when you’re readily accessible via global call forwarding numbers for Australia and New Zealand.

We have toll free, local, and universal virtual phone numbers for Australia to the USA and New Zealand to USA available without a contract. With high-quality PSTN connections and competitive per minute rates, connecting with your partners abroad is much like calling across town. Month-to-month plans are available ranging from basic with included minutes to enterprise with more than 11,000 included minutes. Sign up for a free trial today.

View details about Virtual Phone Numbers here

Sending employees on overseas assignments or relocating them to another office is a complex task, requiring company resources and a great deal of coordination, before and during the relocation. As part of your relocation package, consider adding desktop video meeting services.

Virtual Workplace can supplement or even eliminate the need for an orientation trip. While the good old telephone will help with the logistics of relocating, there are some instances where our video conferencing comes in handy. Let’s take a look.

Meeting with Realtors — Your employees will need a place to live, making a video conference with a local Realtor or property manager is essential early in the process. Meeting face-to-face in a desktop video meeting is a great way for employees to share their requirements with the agent, form a relationship, and feel confident that the agent understands exactly what type of home to find.

The real estate agent can even take employees on video tours of potential homes by joining the desktop video conferencing using a smartphone from the homes themselves.

Meeting with New Colleagues — Work relationships can begin beforehand, enabling employees to get to know future colleagues or even begin some project work remotely. Forming these relationships in advance will make the transition a little easier as your employees will see familiar faces at their new workplaces.

Learning about the Culture — For overseas assignments, it’s helpful for employees to go through a brief cultural orientation. This can be conducted via video conference by one of the local contacts in the other country. In addition, employees can ask about the best areas to live, local transportation, schools and churches, and other areas of interest.

Spousal Requirements — Relocating with a family typically means the spouse must find work. Having access to a desktop video conferencing tool can play a role in the spouse’s remote job search. For example, he or she could meet with a headhunter in a video conference or have a face-to-face interview with a potential employer.

Staying in Touch with Loved Ones — For those on overseas assignments, desktop video conferencing can be a lifeline, helping them to stay connected with their families back home.

Staying in Touch with the Team — Once your employees have settled into their new environments, they can use desktop video meetings to stay in touch with the home office. Whether you want them to provide weekly status updates, stay involved in local projects, or check-in periodically, the ability to connect via a face-to-face video conference can help ease the transition and keep work relationships strong.

These are but a few of the many ways a video meeting can be used as part of an employee relocation package. Adding easy-to-use video conferencing include with Virtual Workplace is a low-cost, high-benefit solution that your employees will appreciate.

Try it free today and discover just how easy our desktop video tool is for all participants to use.

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How to Use Real-Time Communication Tools to Collaborate with Your Global Customers and your Overseas Loved Ones

Global Communications are mandatory if you have loved ones or customers around the world, you know that international phone calls can be tricky and expensive. Elderly parents and grandparents may be hesitant to call due to cost concerns or because it’s intimidating to figure out how to dial using all those country codes, exit codes, and calling card codes. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, many of the tools you use for conducting business globally, such as our international conferencing, global virtual phone numbers, and video conferencing can be used with family scattered around the world. Below are a few ideas that make it easy for your loved ones to reach out no matter where in the world they are.

Global Communications Services

1. Get a Virtual Phone Number. This is a gift they will absolutely love. Here’s how it works: Start by ordering a virtual number that’s local to the country your loved one is located in. For example, if your parents live in the Philippines and you live in the United States, you’d order a virtual number that’s local for those in the Philippines. Your parents would dial a
Philippines local or toll-free number, just as if you were in Manilla or another local city. There’s no need for country codes, exit codes, or calling cards. Their calls would then be forwarded to your phone in the United States. As the virtual phone number account holder, you’ll purchase buckets of prepaid minutes at some of the most competitive per minute rates in the industry. Now, your parents, associates or Philippines based customers can call you at any time without the barriers that previously caused them stress.

2. Use Our International Conference Call Service. How about a group audio call that brings the entire extended family together? This is a great way to celebrate the holidays, ring in the new year, or have a virtual family reunion. With our pay-as-you-go international conferencing plans, there are no activation fees, no contracts, and no minimum requirements. You simply pay for the minutes used (again, with extremely competitive per-minute rates) during your conference calls and you can cancel at any time with no penalties. Each person, whether located in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, or anywhere else in the world, will dial into the conference call using an access number that’s local or toll free to their location. You can also use the “dial out” feature to dial your family members directly if you prefer. This is helpful if someone forgets to join or lives in a country with a poorly developed communications system.

3. Try Desktop Video Conferencing. The first two options are voice only, which is ideal for multi-generational communications. If your family members are tech savvy, consider our desktop video conferencing service. We offer a free 30-day trial and low monthly rates without a contract.

Whether you want to celebrate with your family or conduct business internationally, these three real-time communications tools make it possible to connect with others around the world quickly, easily and affordable. Get started today.

View International Telecommunications Services here

Looking for an effective way to connect with your team, focus on a specific task, and get work done? Look no further than your desktop video conferencing plan. The idea here is to gather together, state what you want to accomplish, and then get to work independently on the stated task. Thus, in a one-hour session, you might spend 5 minutes in the video conference initially stating your goals, then set the timer for 50 minutes of offline work, and then return to the video conference to share what you accomplished or what you may have struggled with during that time.

Whether you’re part of a small, remote team or an online community of like-minded individuals, regular video meet-ups can help keep you connected and on track. Here’s what you need to get started.

• A desktop video conferencing plan — Our Video Pro Conferencing plan is perfect for workgroups. Not only is it affordable, easy to use, and available without a contract, it’s loaded with useful features such as collaborative notes, screen-sharing, personal share space, presenter controls, chats, free VoIP audio, lecture mode, mobile apps, and more. Everyone can join from a standard web browser, making it ideal for groups who may not be tech savvy.

• A reason to gather virtually — What is the reason for the workgroup? It could be anything from making progress on a team project or on individual goals. For example, an engineering firm in need of a LinkedIn presence might schedule monthly workgroups where each principal commits to working on their LinkedIn profiles or creating content to share. A group of watercolor artists might meet monthly in a video conference to work on their designs. Meeting in this ways has a built-in accountability factor, helping motivate participants to get to work.

• Simplicity — The old “keep it simple” adage holds true here. Pick a set time and date for your desktop video workgroups such as the last Tuesday of every month from 1:00pm to 2:00pm. Your agenda should also be simple and consistent from one session to the next such as 5-minute opening where everyone shares their plans for the session, a 50-minute offline work session, and a 5-minute closing/sharing session.

• Eager participants — This method isn’t for everyone, but could be the push many people need to work on tasks that they want to do but often get pushed to the back burners. When inviting participants, stress the benefits. This is NOT your typical video conference. It’s a dedicated slot of time for working on work that matters. It’s also a shared experience, which is a welcome reprieve for remote workers who often work in isolation. Your work group can be as small or as large (up to the limits of your video conferencing plan) as you’d like.

Using desktop video conferencing for a workgroup in this manner allows for face-to-face interactions. Webcams can be used by multiple participants or turned off for those who prefer not to appear on camera. Screen-sharing and pass the presenter controls works well for sharing digital accomplishments such as graphic designs, PowerPoints, animations, etc.

We’re currently offering a free, 30-day trial of Video Pro. Get it now and hold your first workgroup today.

Gathering a group into a global conference call has some logistical challenges to overcome, which is why it’s tempting to keep everyone on the line for as long as possible. After all, you want to get as much as possible accomplished since the entire group is present. There’s certainly a time and place for a long, involved global conference call; however, fatigue can set in quickly and your long group audio calls might not be as productive as you’d like. Consider breaking a long international conference call into a series of micro audio conferences.

Benefits of Shorter, More Frequent Global Conference Calls

One of the biggest downsides of international conferencing is the clock. Depending on where your attendees are located, your global conference calls are likely inconvenient for some participants. Joining a conference call at midnight local time is challenging, even more so when the call is expected to be a one- to two-hour experience. If they skip the call and plan on listening to the recording, that’s a one-to two-hour commitment just to get back up to speed on what they’ve missed. Knowing that the call will only last 10 to 15 minutes could be more palatable to these individuals. Likewise, if they missed the conference call, they can quickly get up to speed first thing in the morning.

Even when the timing is convenient, long conference calls can become draining and unproductive. Holding a series of micro conference calls could result in better:
• Focus
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Results

If you limit the length of your global conference call to a maximum of 15 minutes, your agenda must be tightly focused, most likely on a single topic. This laser focus also means that your participant list can be tailored to better match the topic of discussion. For example, Bob, a regional salesperson in Argentina, doesn’t necessarily need to attend a global conference call discussing custom issues between USA and Taiwan.

Since your micro conferences are more relevant to attendees — and significantly shorter, attendees will likely be more engaged during the conference call and less prone to multi-tasking during the call. It’s much easier to give your full attention for 15 minutes than it is to do so for an hour or longer.

Meeting more frequently but in shorter bursts could also foster better relationships. For example, as the calls become more relevant to attendees, they’ll feel more valued and that their time is respected. Since the calls occur more frequently, you can address and resolve issues as they come up.

It’s easier to retain information and take appropriate action when given in smaller doses. It’s also easier to hold others accountable for focused, timely tasks rather than a long laundry list of things to get done.

Hosting a series of micro global conference calls requires access to an easy-to-use international conferencing plan with exceptional audio quality and helpful features. You want to make joining your global conference calls as easy as possible for attendees, especially since you’ll be using it more often. Our pay-as-you-go international conferencing plans are simple, user-friendly, affordable, and loaded with premium features. Local and toll-free access numbers are provided for 150 countries for easy dial-in access. We even have a free mobile app for one-touch access. There are no monthly fees, no minimum usage requirements, and no contracts! Give it a try and find out just how easy it is to host global conference calls on demand or on a schedule.

Learn more about global conferencing here