Sometimes, geography and logistics make it impossible for all of a meeting's participants to be in the same room. And in this era where companies must do more with less, time and costs often make travel prohibitive for many businesses.

Conducting a meeting over the phone creates specific difficulties, primarily because participants are not face to face. Most services offer a set of features to address some of the problems of business conferencing.

services are remarkably similar in terms of their basic offerings. Because almost all teleconference services buy their equipment from one of a few manufacturers, there are very few differences in terms of features and connection quality. There are two basic types of audio teleconference available: reservationless and operator-assisted.

Telephone conferencing services are generally used on a per-conference basis. Most services do not require long-term agreements, and there is no need to use the same service that handles your long-distance calling. This makes trying alternate services quite easy and essentially risk-free.

Choosing a teleconference service if you plan to hold reservationless conferencing is a fairly straightforward affair: just make sure the teleconference service offers conferencing with the features you want at a fair price

Technical support. Although it is generally very easy to setup, Web conferencing can be difficult for computer-challenged people. Learn about available technical support to help troubleshoot problems.

In May 2005, the FCC imposed immediate E911 requirements for VoIP service providers, which gave implied legitimacy to this growing telephony field. In this new ruling, a VoIP service provider, such as Vonage, must support E911 services within a 120-day window. In order to comply with the new regulations, a Voice over IP provider must have their 911 calls placed with emergency services within the caller's proximity, rather than where that VoIP number might be located. Another change to the current 911 services would require providers to automatically file the customer's location in their system, while now this is only an optional feature

What is audio conferencing and where can one find information on teleconferencing? This article will provide a definition and some basic information about navigating the world of audio conferencing. Although most people in today's workforce know some facts about teleconferencing, most are not sure how audio conferencing works or about the different levels of service offered.

Today's companies are staying competitive in their respective marketplaces by using the highly interactive features of audio and web conferencing. Through such global conferencing providers as Netspoke, and WebEx and InterCall, businesses can improve their revenue, collaboration and customer satisfaction -- all in a time-sensitive manner

With more and more businesses using conference call services (according to the Houston Business Journal, usage is growing at a rate of 60 percent per year), as well as online conferencing, participants need to be briefed in conference call etiquette. Doing so increases productivity, good will and customer service.