User:Jwalino/Conferencing Bridges

A Conferencing Bridge, or teleconferencing bridge, is a system that allows more than two or more participants over a telecommunications network to communicate. Traditionally, teleconferencing has been accomplished using telephones and, therefore, has been based on audio conversations. As such, conferencing bridges are commonly known as the systems which provide conference calls.

Conferencing bridges are used by telecommunications service providers, such as telephone companies, enterprises, and not-for-profit organizations to host conference calls for their customers, employees, or members.

History of Conferencing Bridges
In the mid 1980s, after the breakup of AT&T, several companies started producing the technology necessary to combine the audio streams from several separate telephone lines into a mixed stream containing all of the lines. In addition, PBX manufacturers started including features for three-way calling and mixing technology in their product set. Because teleconferencing was quickly recongized to be a more efficient way to hold a meeting than to travel and meet in person, an entire industry of Conferencing Service Providers started buying conferencing bridgs and offering conference calling as a service. Initially, most conference calls were conducted as events and were scheduled and attended using operators provided by these conferencing service providers, but the popularity of reservationless audio teleconferencing, or audio conferencing without a pre-scheduled time or an operator to facilitate the meeting, grew quickly. Costs declined and the pure conferencing industry growth slowed even while total minutes of conferencing use continued to grow.

Operating a Conferencing Bridge vs. Using a Conferencing Service Provider
Today, organizations have a choice of either operating their own conferencing bridge or using a service provider.