Due to the rise of audio conferencing, businesses have been having it easier. It is helping them reach out to geographically separated people. As a result, these establishments are also saving on cost and time. Quite often you have difficulties in scheduling your professional events. This occurs due to the rise of conflicting circumstances. These could be conflicts pertaining to schedules, geographically separated venues, time differences between countries, the time that it takes to travel, hotel accommodations, and other logistics related issues.

Take the example of distance learning. Here, students are required to reach out to the faculty if they want to attend professional development programs. How do they do this? In this modern age, video and audio conferencing have brought professionals to a common platform. Thus, conference calling has become an effective mode of communication. It is a fantastic aid in exchanging ideas for any professional development activity. Professionals today are gathering greater technical expertise by attending seminars which are held in different countries. And how is this being achieved? It is being achieved by the help of today’s communication technology.

On browsing the Internet, we can find many schools that are offering distance learning courses. Microsoft offers their Windows-based MCP training through distance learning. This has solved several problems, which would inevitably have appeared if professionals and other students had to physically be present at the classes.

Today, distance learning is helping those who are sitting on the other side of the world to acquire the appropriate knowledge in the subjects of their interest. And all this is being achieved because they have access to the required technology. Inter-active video, audio, and online media are being deployed today by many institutions to impart knowledge to adult students on various subject matters.

Within the communication technology available today, audio conferencing is considered to be a lower form of interactive technology. Nevertheless, audio conferencing is one of the top business solutions of today. Audio conferencing is extensively used in distant professional development programs and helps in communication over long distances.

Business enterprises have today spread their nets all over the world. Hence, they need to keep in touch. Professionals in those business houses are required to meet to carry out discussions and to make decisions. Sales conferences are increasingly being held by enterprises. Many of these conferences are conducted by audio conferencing. The business world is truly reaping the benefits of audio conferencing. Real time interactions, faster decision making possibilities, and a huge reduction in cost and travel expenses have made the audio conference call the darling of business meetings.

Audio conferencing provides us with the benefit of a substantial reduction in cost. This goes a long way in enhancing business processes, fostering better communication, and collaboration. It is general practice for many organizations to outsource their audio conferencing needs to service providers. This facility can be utilized by paying a fee to the provider company each time that the audio conferencing network is hired.

There are also service providers who offer pay-as-you-go services. An organization can also build its own audio conferencing system. This can be done by purchasing the equipment and implementing a teleconferencing network within the enterprise.



Thanks to Ajeet Khurana for contributing this article to our Conferencing blog:

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Video conferencing is method by which people in different locations communicate in real time with two or more people at different locations via video This ability to see the remote participants as well being able to hear them has many benefits over audio-conferencing.

Video conferencing is now widely used by all industry sectors. Multinational companies use it to communicate with international branch offices, whilst smaller companies use videoconferencing to enable them to work with clients and suppliers in different countries.

The equipment required for video conferencing is simple to operate. On screen menus enable you to enter the number you want to call or select it from an address book. Gone are the days where videoconferencing required specialist technicians - now everyone in your office can be shown how to place calls with a 10 minute training session.

Video conferencing should not be considered in ‘black and white’ terms - there will always be a need to travel to meet clients or partners especially during the important early stages when relationships are being built. Where videoconferencing wins out is being able to maintain those relationships easily and cost effectively.

Modern video conference systems enable users to share documents and computer images with the remote (far end) party. When videoconferencing is used in this manner it becomes part of a collaboration solution.

Video conferencing is not only used internationally, many legal firms and consultants use videoconference systems to avoid billing clients travel time and to be able to carry out more client meetings in any given time period.

Many-to-many communication: this is the most complex form of video conferencing and is mostly associated with room based video conferencing technology. In this case several parties (more than 2) are involved in the conference, and all can be seen and heard.

Why use video conferencing?

A telephone call or e-mail is not always the best way to communicate with another person. Interactive meetings can help to generate ideas, and enable people to read and react to others’ sensitivities

Video conference communication and meetings are often much shorter in total as no travel is involved. A meeting that may take you away from work for four hours (due to travel) may take only one or two hours using a video conference. You can communicate more regularly with people in other districts or countries, which would usually be costly or impossible if you had to travel. Using video conferencing saves money as it can lower your expenses - there is no need for all the costs involved with travelling, such as meals and tickets

You can video conference with many more people than would fit into a single meeting room because each party will be using their own facilities, video conferencing allows for collaboration by document sharing. Many people in different areas can work on the same project and make contributions.

Many institutions can receive the same broadcast simultaneously and thus a much greater level of participation can be gained. For example, a lecture being broadcast to students at many different educational institutions

How do I use videoconferencing?

Videoconferencing can be extremely easy to use.  The most recent developments have been with 4 digit dialling opposed to entering in IP Addresses to connect to the far end.  This process would often be perceived by non technical users of the system as overly technical and would lead to a frustrating and clumsy user experience. 

We are all used to entering phone numbers in to mobile phones or fax machines where there is an on screen display of the number being dialled. Video conferencing is similar but with a TV as the onscreen display and a video image of the participants at the far end. Placing a call is easy, although there are advanced features available on most videoconferencing systems, these do not need to be used if not necessary.

What equipment do I need?

Video conferencing systems & equipment vary from entry-level systems where a videoconferencing unit (codec) is placed on top of a TV monitor, through to advanced ‘installed’ systems in boardrooms and meeting rooms. The latter require careful system design and expert installation.  CCOMM have been designing and building complex but easy to use main board room and meeting room installations since 1996.

Apart from the videoconferencing hardware a carrier is required for the communication between the near-end and far-end systems. This carrier can be ISDN digital telephone lines or IP based computer networks. Generally when organisations use video conferencing to speak to branch or international offices then IP (h.323) is used. When speaking to outside organisations it is most common to use ISDN (h.320).



Thanks to Peter Mann for contributing this article to our Conferencing blog:

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I need to know if there is any free video or audio conferencing class to learn C programming. If someone know about it please answer me…

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