Free Conference Calling Blog

I saw these questions:

1. is this conference call service FREE?
2. Will you provide a US phone conference bridge and PIN?

Here are the answers:

1. Yes, Rondee does not charge for our basic conference calling service.

2. Yes, we provide you with a US based dial-in number.  We also provide you with a conference PIN code and you can customize the PIN code.

Here were some questions recently asked that others have also been asking about:
I am registered… and have a custom PIN.  When I set up a conference call on
demand… I set up a different PIN.  Why is that?

Scheduled Rondee and Rondee-On-Demand operate on two different systems even though they both access the same conference bridge.
Here is a quick summary of the difference between the two services:

Scheduled Rondees are calendared through the Rondee website. You sign in to Rondee.com to choose the date and time for the call. Rondee sends out email invitations, and invitees respond on the Rondee website. Rondee keeps track of the attendance and displays the call title, agenda and responses on a page unique to that call. Various features can be enabled such as call recording, automated reminders and recurring conferences. Rondee emails each participant a different PIN code unique to him or her.

Rondee On Demand conferences are not scheduled through the Rondee website. Instead, you independently notify your invitees of the date/time, and all participants dial in with the exact same PIN code. Click here to get a PIN code for Rondee On Demand.

Is it true that I can have multiple PINS attributed to my email
address?

I assume this question is in reference to Rondee-On-Demand and the answer is yes…. you can have multiple conference calling pin codes for Rondee-On-Demand associated with your e-mail.

Would this be, say, for different meetings?

Yes, this is typically the reason people have different PIN codes for Rondee-On-Demand.  Many folks use Rondee for conference calling in different aspects of their life (professional, nonprofit associations, personal, etc)

Why then do I have a personal PIN?  Is that for scheduled Rondees?

With scheduled Rondee conference calling, you have one PIN that is “glued” to your e-mail address.  You can change it if you want but it always follows you around to every Scheduled Rondee you organize and every Scheduled Rondee you are invited to.

I saw someone asked the question: “Can last-minute participants use my personal pin to access this conference call?”

The answer is yes. last-minute participants can access the conference call using this method

I saw this posting from a prospective corporate user: “I often use free conference call services  for my work. I have recently become concerned about the sustainability of the business model. Because of the high interchange fees, I expect that carriers will increasingly block calls to these services. What makes Rondee’s model more sustainable - and therefore more reliable for businesses - than its competitors?”

There has recently been extensive publicity concerning VOIP carriers, most notably Google Voice, blocking calls to services located in rural areas.  The problem came about because the rural phone companies in these particular areas impose exorbitant tariffs on the national carriers who originate these calls. The reason that the free conferencing services partner with these rural carriers is because the rural carriers are able to collect high tariffs on these calls. Such tariffs, in some cases, have been five to ten times higher than the tariffs on normal call traffic. In turn, the free conference call services enter into more lucrative revenue share arrangements than would otherwise be possible.

Individual callers have historically not paid these tariffs; rather, they have been paid by the national carriers that originate the phone calls. With Google’s recent moves, there is now growing concern that these tariffs could get passed along to users of free conference services.

Rondee users have been totally unaffected by this controversy. This is because Rondee is the only major free conference call service that does not use the sort of rural dial-in numbers that are at the heart of this controversy.”

Rondee’s free conference call dial-in bridge is area code 619 — the metropolitan San Diego area code. Rondee does not charge for its regular service.

When you arrange a Rondee conference call you’ll see several boxes with options you can choose. All you need to do is check the box to record the call. Your invitees will be told that the call is being recorded. After the conference call is finished, just go back to Rondee.com (you can get to that page through “My Rondees” link at the top of ths screen once logged into your account; you’ll see a new link for the recording which appears on the page corresponding to that Rondee; you can also get back to that page by clicking on the link in the invitation email)

This is now Recurring Rondees work.

• A the time when you schedule a Rondee, you’ll see a little check-box that allows you to specify “Make this a Recurring Rondee”
• You’ll also be able to select whether it should repeat every day, week, month, etc.
• When you specify that a Rondee will be recurring, we store that information away.  But but we do not send out a bunch of invitations at that moment. Each recurring Rondee has only one “live” invitation at any given time.
• When the conference concludes, we determine when the next scheduled version of the recurring call should take place. We then schedule another Rondee at that date for you automatically

This means that users can stop a recurring call simply by unchecking the “Make this a recurring Rondee” checkbox.

Here are the steps to add someone to a Rondee conference:

First, navigate your way back to that Rondee’s page. You have two options:

1) You can either click on the link in the e-mail you received when you organized the Rondee; or
2) You can log back into your account, click on “My Rondees” and then select the particular Rondee you want to invite someone else to join

Once you are on that Rondee’s page, you will see a box titled “Invite more people”. Type in their email address and then click the done button which appears in the lowest right corner of the page

Rondee organizers frequently ask whether Rondee can be accessed internationally.  The answer is definitely yes.  As long as your users can dial 619-276-6333 (our bridge number is a California number) they can access Rondee.

Only Rondee gives you a convenient way to schedule calls on the web, a universal access number 619-2-RONDEE (619-276-6333) you can put in your speed-dial, and your very own virtual meeting space where registered users don’t need to remember random codes.

And, besides being free, Rondee also includes convenient web-based scheduling.

Over the weekend we had a user ask us about how the muting function works on Rondee. This is a topic that comes up quite a bit. Each participant on a Rondee conference call can mute or un-mute themselves. You press pound 1 to mute and then pound 1 to unmute. If you forget this option, you can always press pound to hear all options.