Conference calling is a telephone call in which the caller may have more than one called party hold on the line. It is designed for more than one party to talk or listening to each other. The third party can either be there to just listen or to participate in the conversation. The first party is the one responsible for dialing and adding other participants.

The calling party will call the other party and will press the flash button then call the third party to be part the call. This is usually how conference calling between three parties functions in most home or office settings.

Businesses use free conference calling quite extensively today. It is used daily to talk with parties both outside the company and internally. Conference calling is used for all kinds of meetings and functions, including regular meetings, training calls, sales presentations, and communication to personnel who work in remote locations. This is done primarily to increase communications amongst people and it also reduces traveling expenses, and saves time because employees do not have to travel out of the office as often.

Large companies use conference calling to communicate new products and promotions, provide briefings, updates sales figures and share information internally with employees and externally with customers and suppliers for example. Many times, conference calling allows a distributed team to stay in contact with scheduled calls to provide and obtain updates on projects and other business matters.

Today, video conference calls may be used for some social purposes. People get connected to one another, get to talk things right away and get to meet new people. Family members, who live far apart from each other, now use conference calling to stay in touch and social groups have meetings via conference calls.

Advantages include recording of conversations, recording playback which allows participants to listen to a recorded meeting, live call screen which will allow one another during the conference, web conferencing that able you to chat with one another on ideas you might want to share with the group, and international out dial that will allow the calling party to call a long distance or international phone number to join you in the conversation.

Conference calling has become an invaluable tool to almost all businesses today because it is an easy and cost effective way to bring people together to share information, exchange ideas and to stay in touch. Calls can be scheduled or impromptu and the number of participants is only limited by the service you use. It is easy to get started and you can change your service type as your needs continue to change over time.

Learn the basics of this technology and experience the fast and easy benefits of it today. Whether your needs are for a simple three-way call, or you have to host a call with 1,000 or more participants, there are easy conference calling solutions available to meet your needs and budget.