Conference Phones
Conference Phone Overview
The conferencing phones are used for conversation among more than one person at a time. The conference phones can be divided into following types:
Conference Phone For Home Users
For home user a speaker phone can be used as conference phone. The persons come near the telephone to join in conversation with the caller. Another type of conference phone called three party conference is used for making conversation with two parties at the same time and the phone has facility for terminating two incoming lines. The user receives the call or makes the call and then put the called party on hold and again dials the phone number of another person to take him on line. Once the other person is available on line the conference button is pressed to get all three persons taking to each other.
Conference Phone For Corporate
The conference phone is used when numbers of persons present in a conference room or across the table are required to talk to the called party and want to hear the called party voice. The conference phone for offices consists of basically a speaker phone without handset and number of microphones to pickup voice from more than one direction. The phones which are capable of picking up conversations from all directions are marketed as phones with 360-Degree Microphone Coverage and have number of microphones around its body.
The phones are available in various ranges suitable for use of number of persons required to converse and distances of persons from the phones. These phones have special circuitry to block echo as well as background noise so that conversation is heard clearly at both ends. Some manufacturers such a Polycom have special trademark technology for providing clear voices in their conference phones.
The conference phones have limited coverage and are marketed suitable for distances such as 7 ft or 17 Ft. For larger conferences rooms some phones have facility to connect two or more units together to provide the adequate converge for all the persons.
The wireless conference phones based on cordless phone technologies such as 2.4 HGz, 5.8 GHz and DECT 6.0 are also available. The wireless conference phone allows one to move them to the room where the conferencing is required. These also do away with clutter of wires needed for corded phones. Some of the high end wireless conference phones also have facilities for turning on 64-bit voice encryption and providing authentication key between the console and base station.
Some of the vendors of conference phones are Ploycom, Maxtouch, Konftel, ClearOne, Aethra.
