Conference call

Welcome to our network for learning skills

A conference call is a telephone call in which someone talks to several people at the same time. The conference calls may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party merely listens into the call and cannot speak. It is sometimes called ATC(audio tele-conference).

Conference calls can be designed so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the call; however, participants are usually able to call into the conference call themselves by dialing a telephone number that connects to a "conference bridge" (a specialized type of equipment that links telephone lines).

Companies commonly use a specialized service provider who maintains the conference bridge, or who provides the phone numbers and PIN codes that participants dial to access the meeting or conference call. These service providers can often dial-out to participants, connecting them to call and introducing them to the parties who are on-the-line. The operators can also take additional information such as question and answer details and also enable and disable advanced conferencing features such as muting lines, muting participants and enabling a recording feature. An operator can often be summoned to conference call hosted by a service provider using a combination of keys on a users' (sometimes only the moderator) telephone keypad. The most common recall function is *0. (asterisk and the zero/operator key)

The more limited three-way calling is available (usually at an extra charge) on home or office phone lines. For a three-way call, the first called party is dialed. Then the hook flashbutton (or recall button) is pressed and the other called party's phone number is dialed. While it is ringing, flash/recall is pressed again to connect the three people together. This option allows callers to add a second outgoing call to an already connected call.