Hosting a teleconference call is a terrific way to hold a "virtual meeting" where everyone who needs to be involved in a conversation about a certain topic can listen in and provide input as needed. These types of teleconferencing meetings are very useful when companies have employees in various locations, or when a diverse group of people, who are not all in the same location, need to communicate in the most effective method possible.



While these audio teleconferencing sessions can be extremely valuable and can save a lot of time and money by eliminating a great deal of travel, there can be some drawbacks to running a conference call. One of the biggest problems is noise, as everyone needs to hear exactly what is being said on the call. When people speak during the teleconference call, all of the background noise in their environment is easily picked up by the phone, which everyone else can hear as well.

When there are hundreds of people participating in a teleconference call, a great deal of background noise can be generated and in no time at all it becomes difficult to hear people talking. When this happens, it is not only distracting, but oftentimes it is simply impossible to have clear communication, which completely defeats the reason for having the teleconferencing meeting.

But, all is not lost. In this circumstance, it is best to use teleconferencing services that allow the organizers of the call to have control to mute the participants. The benefit of this is that all of the background noise from the dozens or hundreds of people calling in will disappear. The drawback is that those who are muted will not be able to speak to add information to the discussion, nor will they be able to ask questions if needed.

However, there are some new technologies that the teleconferencing services have started to introduce to help with this issue. The most common solution is to have everyone who will need to speak during the teleconference to call in with a unique pin number that will separate them from the bulk of the callers. In this way, those who are organizing the call and speaking can do so, while everyone who just needs to listen and absorb the information can be in on the call without worrying about adding background noise.

Also, most of the teleconferencing services allow all callers to press a certain key on their phone to mute their own line. Unfortunately, not everyone uses this feature correctly so there still can be a lot of distractions from background noises. This can be frustrating for everyone, especially when the organizers want as many callers as possible to participate in the conference call and ask questions of the presenters.

The teleconferencing services have responded to this problem by coming up with some innovative solutions. One approach that some of these services now offer is a way for people on the call to "raise their hand" electronically, by pressing a certain number on their keypad. The person moderating a teleconference call can then see who has raised their hand as a request to speak by being logged onto the website. The moderator can then control who is allowed to verbally participate.