Teleconferences can be a great tool for meeting with clients and co-workers while telecommuting. There are some services availabled online that allow you to schedule free teleconferences where each caller pays for any applicable long distance calls. With so many services offering unlimited calling within the U.S. (e.g. Skype and Vonage), this becomes a free call anyway.

Many of the services also offer reasonable toll free service at a per minute charge. For example: www.freeconference.com offers toll free conference calls at 10 cents per minute per user.

These services allow even the home based small business to provide professional quality teleconference hosting at the lowest cost.  

Many popular services, like Vonage, Skype, and a host of smaller companies offer “voice over IP” of VoIP in lieu of regular phone service. The principle benefit to the consumer or business is cost savings over conventional telephone service.

Our experience with this technology is very mixed. We have a Vonage router configured at one location running over high speed ADSL service. This service is prone to network congestion and even something as simple as sending a large email attachment can bring VoIP communication to a grinding halt. Suddenly, you can hear the person at the other end of the call, but they cannot hear you. The problem is that ADSL typically has a lower capacity for outgoing traffic than it does for incoming, which is fine for most web browsing and downloading, but VoIP requires capacity in both directions.

Others use cable broadband modems with somewhat better results, although delays do occur and once again traffic from email and file uploads can consume all the capacity leaving the phone useless.

Businesses are faring better because they can configure quality of service for VoIP communications and allow that traffic to have priority in their network. But a business VoIP phone system can be expensive to implement and is generally reserved for those who have multiple locations and an internal dedicated network.

With enough data speed on the links, we have seen both Vonage and Skype perform well enough to be indistiguishable from conventional telephone service. In an earlier article, we reviewed an excellent headset that makes Skype perform very well, assuming a fast enough Internet connection.

The traveling telecommuter is watching this space very closely, because we rely on the portability of the VoIP network to allow us to work from anyplace there is an Internet connection, but results have been frequently disappointing, especially from Europe, where connection speeds tend to be lower. But one of our friends travels to China frequently and uses his Vonage phone with great results, so we are optimistic. As they say, “your mileage may vary.”

While traveling in Europe recently, we discovered a VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) call forwarding service that allows travelers to forward their calls from a home or business line to a fixed or cell phone. This can facilitate travelers ability to receive important calls while they are on the road or away from their home country. RoamAbout is an alternative international roaming service designed to function like regular roaming with affordable fees for roaming calls.  It allows travelers to keep their mobile number everywhere they travel and to make calls from a remote destination for lower fees that the regular mobile phone companies charge.   

 Instead of carrying multiple phones or having to dial a long phone card number or call back number we had the option of using RoamAbout. Bonus features include free voice mail, conference calling, easy to use SMS (Short Message Service) and the option to purchase a SIM card (Subscriber Identification Module) or phone before the trip. The SIM is the mobile number and account information for the phone we use while traveling.

To use the RoamAbout Mobile web site it is necessary to register for the services. Although registration is free, there is a one time activation fee of $10, which can be charged to a credit card. Once an account is established users can access it from any computer to make changes or from the local Automated Attendant IVR system in any origination country, which RoamAbout lists under the Help Tab. 

Services, SIM cards and/or phone choices can be selected menu fashion from the Products & Services Tab with a RoamAbout Shopping Cart. Upon forwarding a phone users receive a free voice mailbox and SMS capability via the RoamAbout web portal. It is possible to forward home and office numbers. It is possible to make outbound international calls from RoamAbout origination countries to any destination in the world.

RoamAbout also offers a Scheduled Conference Bridge with service for up to 100 connections. Instructions on how to schedule a teleconference appear under Conference Bridging . Users can purchase a pre-paid SIM and/or a GSM phone on their own or from RoamAbout.

In essence what RoamAbout does is allow users to forward their mobile phone calls to RoamAbout and RoamAbout forwards all the calls from the user’s “regular” mobile number to another mobile number anywhere in the world (usually to a low cost, local pre-paid SIM the user has, acquires or purchases)

RoamAbout plans to expand to 100 countries. A free soft phone product can be used with a laptop, PC or PDA to call from any Internet connection to anywhere. The target audience for RoamAbout are international business travelers who have to stay in contact with their vendors and clients and often encounter the highest roaming charges. People who live in one country and work in another called Cross-Border Workers are good candidates for this service. According to RoamAbout, there are more than 12 million of these workers in the European Union alone and this group makes the next largest user group of RoamAbout services. Often, these users have had to carry two mobile phones, one for work and another for home (three of us had six cell phones between us).

RoamAbout suggests travelers consider their services if they have international roaming bills of $65 or more on a regular basis and want to save on the roaming charges. Because of the arrangments we had made prior to our departure we didn’t use the RoamAbout services this time. We will keep them in mind for a future trip and have recommended them to several friends and acquaintances who travel internationally often.More information is available at RoamAbout.

We have used callback services for years to save on long distance calls. But one of the problems has typically been the need to have a direct dial phone number to receive the "call back". Now the callback service available at www.kallback.com offers the ability to have the computer ask for you by name, allowing it to work at hotels and other locations where someone has to route your call. There is a fee of $5 a month for this service if you need to be able to change the callback location where your calls are routed, but if your traveling office is actively moving, it could be a great solution.