Conference phones serve two basic purposes – First, to support a two-way conversation. Second, to support a one-way “broadcast” if you will. For instance, a guest speaker, CEO, executive director, etc. is addressing a group of people. He/she talks, the group listens.

First you need to consider the size of your group and if everyone really needs to participate in a “two-way” conversation. If they do, then everyone obviously needs to hear and be heard, by not only the local group, but by the person(s) at the far end.

You have a small group, say 10 people or less. Chances are, if you’re in quiet room, you can get by with a tabletop conference phone. “Go get the Polycom”. Polycom, a company that is one of the pioneers in this business has become the “Kleenex” of the conference phone world. For analog, two way conferencing, Polycom and ClearOne are the leaders. Depending on what city you’re in, a Polycom conference phone if you don’t own one, rents for $50 to $100 per day. Francis Audio-Visual has these types of conference phones for rent.

What if you have 10-20 people? Then you need to double your coverage. If they are all seated around a big conference table, you simply can rent a two-module Polycom or similar system. Francis Audio-Visual has a two module, wireless conference phone system that is great for these size groups. Both modules run on re-chargeable batteries and so there are no phone or power cords running across the floor. A base station plugs into the incoming phone line and “broadcasts” or “talks to and hears” both table top modules. There is a 150’ range so you save a lot of setup time with no long phone wire to run. A system like this, rents from Francis Audio-Visual for $100 to $125 per day.

More people? Bigger group? Say you have a ballroom full of 200 to 300 or more people. Now you need to abandon the table top phones and go with a separate PA system. But wait, you’re on a tight budget and they said you could get the job done for under $100! *Yes and no, we’ll come back to that. If you want people in your local group to converse with the remote person/group you really need to provide them with a microphone(s) so they can be heard by all when they make their comments or ask their questions. First suggestion, put a microphones on stands in the center aisle so they can walk up and talk to all the participants near and far. You will need to rent not only a microphone(s) but also a mixer to do this . If you want a question and answer microphone(s) to pass around to people in the group you will need to rent wireless microphones. You will also need to rent, a “telephone interface”. Some telephone interfaces have built-in mixing capability. Lastly you will need to connect to a PA system. The PA system can be a portable rented system or if there is a decent one in the meeting room, you can connect to the house PA system. A mixer with an “Aux send” output is preferable so you can control the output level. This amount of gear is going to put the price range in the $250 plus price range.

Now what about the $100 or less budget! We see many groups have their moderator at the podium fielding questions from their audience and repeating (or reading) them into a tabletop conference phone. For the response from the far end, the moderator can “mute” the local microphone in the tabletop unit (to prevent feedback) and it simply becomes a voice that can be piped into a local microphone and into the local PA system. The one thing that is required for all of these scenarios is an analog phone line like you would have for a fax or credit card machine. No analog line? To use a digital phone line, you will need an analog to digital converter.

Many one way broadcasts involve several remote locations calling into a bridge so one person can be heard by several locations. For conferences held in hotel meeting rooms, calling out can be very expensive. It is more economical if the far location can call into your meeting room to save money.