Free conference calls have been around for years. Millions of callers have used the free companies since they launched around the year 2000. Over the years the service has been very popular. 

But things have changed dramatically in the past year. You may have noticed the fast busy signals when dialing into the free conferencing service. Or perhaps you’ve noticed the extra fees and charges on your phone bill or your participants phone bill? These problems highlight how the walls have been closing in on free conferencing for some time. 

Have you ever wondered how free conferencing services make their money? How on earth can these telecom companies provide an expensive service like conferencing to millions of people without charging for it?? Is it ads? Nope. Is it donations? No….

In fact, they make their money through a regulatory scheme called “traffic pumping.”

Broadly speaking, traffic pumping exploits a loophole in US laws that forces telecommunications companies to pay extra fees when passing calls along to rural areas. These fees were set up to help small phone carriers provide telecom service to folks in extremely rural areas of the US. Obviously these laws were not intended to line the pockets of opportunistic conferencing companies who intentionally set up shop in rural areas to charge and collect high fees from telecom providers. 

Subsequently, the FCC has been working on eliminating these bad actors by passing laws to stop these schemes. 

Additionally, many telecom companies who have been incurring the high costs of transferring their customer’s calls to the “free” conferencing service have been blocking calls to the service or charging their customers extra fees to recover their costs. 

We at PrayerLines.org know that churches and ministries have used free conferencing for years. We also know these services are becoming untenable. While our service is a pay service, its quite reasonable and offers things that no free service can offer.

We certainly dont have fast busy signals or get blocked by AT&T and we dont cause your participants to incur extra per minute charges or fees.

Even more importantly, we answer the phone. For another, we provide our Live Call Manager.

If you are still using free conferencing and are pulling your hair out in frustration, please give us a call at 888-218-5287 or simply sign up online here. We know your prayer conference line needs and we can help get your service back on track right away. 

Ref:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/att-feud-freeconferencecallcom-heats-up
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-reforms-further-reduce-access-arbitrage
https://www.fcc.gov/general/traffic-pumping
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/account/out-of-plan-phone-numbers