Disruptive Telephony

One interesting development in the world of Skype last week which I've seen little mention of is the fact that the folks at Highspeedconferencing.com have rolled out a Skype Extra that lets Skype users have large-scale conference calls. Like most such large conference bridges, they have moderation/"hand-raising", call recording, email invites, etc. However, the key point to me is that their conferencing bridge uses the wideband audio supported by Skype! That is the key. You now have conference calling with audio quality that is far better than the PSTN! This is where we start to get into the space where VoIP can offer a truly different - and better - user experience than traditional telephony. The Skype blog touches on this:

HighSpeed Conferencing is the only audio conferencing service available to Skype users that offers high-definition (HD) voice quality. There’s no degradation of audio quality, no matter how many Skype users participate in a conference call. And with unlimited usage during a conference call, you can talk as much as you want. Some people stay on the conference bridge all day.

I've not yet used the service as right now I'm not involved with large conference calls, but at the point that I do I will very definitely check it out. (On a tangent, I wonder if Polycom has a trademark on "HD Voice"?) Have any of you tried it out?

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