Underground Journal

“Free Conference Calls” Cost You More

If you’re out looking for a conference call service provider, don’t fall into the trap laid by the so called free or cheap conference call ads. Many of these companies engage in traffic pumping which means that while they don’t bill you, they incur fees that are passed onto your local phone service provider who will pass these fees onto you and your other call participants. How bad is that fee? You’re often looking at a charge of around 50 cents a minute per participant which can be 10 times how much you would pay for a typical conference call.

How does the scheme work? The additional fees are possible because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This law allows rural phone network owners to charger higher fees for traffic that travels across their network. The reason for this being that they have substantial infrastructor costs and generally little traffic from which to recover their investment. After this law was passed, some networks have taken advantage of it and made deals with phone service companies such as conference call providers to give them a commission if they route their calls over their rural networks. Therefore, the rural network receives a significantly higher amount of traffic on which they can charge their elevated rate and the affiliated phone service provider receives a commission. This scheme is called traffic pumping. Some of these “free conference call” providers may even route your call over multiple rural networks to rack up even more fees!

How can you avoid this? We recommend you sign up with a company that will charge you a published rate under a toll or toll free plan. If you plan on making a number of conference calls you may want to consider an unlimited plan. To be absolutely sure that the company you are considering does not participate in traffic pumping, you should contact your local phone service provider and ask. Your local phone company normally keeps a record of service providers who incur additional fees.

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