Conference Calling In Business

Businesses make a large amount of conference calls each week, some business make conference calls on a daily basis to liase with their external / remote sales teams or to discuss projects with their business partners around the world. It is not always feasible to meet face to face and in todays business world, business is seldom done between just two individuals. There are often many parties that need to be privvy to the information discussed on a telephone call and realying your call to all parties just isn’t possible.

Conferencing calling in most companies today is handled by a third party. This is an extremely cost effective measure and often leads to better quality of service than relying on your existing internal telephone system. The third party operators set up a call bridge that many people can call into at once, gain access via a pin code and then hold a conversation which all parties are a part of.

Conference call companies offer their service for a monthly fee (within inclusive minutes) or on a minute by minute basis. Some operators also offer a toll free / free phone conference call service which means you or your business contacts can dial in for free and not be hit with the cost of the call.

ISP Technical Support Help Desks

Have you ever wondered how your current Broadband Internet Service Provider can handle / support such a large amount of calls at the same time? This is due to help desk outsourcing. As the name suggests, this involves moving their entire phone (or online) support operation outside their main headquarters to a remote location, sometimes outside the country and more often than not, to a company whos business it is to literally just provide support for companies.

There are numerous help desk services provided by these companies, the main one being phone support for your product or service, but sometimes these companies will also provide live online support via chat or e-mail. The help desk staff that man the helplines 24/7 at your ISP are all extremely highly trained in the technical aspects of your product and service as well as being highly trained in dealing with customers.

The help desk services, particularly with Internet Service Providers in the UK are second to none. Each time I have had issues I have been pleasantly surprised at the level of technical competence portrayed by the individuals at the end of the time. Long may it continue!

What is the difference between Broadband and DSL?

We do consider ourselves experts on most subjects related to broadband and often get asked the question, “What is the difference between Broadband and DSL?” - I guess this because the most technical ISP’s describe their “Internet” offering as ADSL or “asynchronous digital subscriber line” where as the packages aimed at home users, they simply call it “Broadband”

Well, the answer, there is absolutely no difference, Broadband and ADSL are completely one in the same. There are no differences whatsoever.

Please note that although there is no difference between a Broadband Connection and an ADSL Connection, the speed of either your ADSL or Broadband connections are variable from 512kb up to 16MB. But this is a difference in speed only, not the actual “type” of service.

Hope that clears it up!