I have written positively about my experience with FreeConference.com for almost a decade now. You and others pay your own long-distance charges to a common conference number, usually in a rural state like Iowa. The service provider then charges termination fees for each of the calls in that conference to the originating telcos.
The big telcos have bellyached for years. First, because this cut into their lucrative 50c + per minute per caller conferencing service. Then as they moved to unmetered plans on home and blocks of time on cellular long-distance lines, they resented these calls making up much of the traffic. Even though they charged $25, 50, 75 for those monthly plans.
Now Google Voice has jumped into the fray. They do not charge a monthly fee on your home or mobile line, so you can sympathize up to a point. But they get advertising revenue as it helps overall Google viewer metrics and customer aggregation.
Here’s my perspective as a consumer. I don’t particularly want free..I would be happy to pay 3-4c a minute for the convenience of knowing everyone I invited to a conference call will not be blocked.
So FCC, jump in and swat the conference calling boys and Verizon and Sprint and AT&T and Google to come up with some middle ground between free and 10c a minute a person that freeconferencecall.com charges for its own toll-free service.
In the meantime, time to start using Skype conferencing more.