Conference call (telecommunications)

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Under a conference call ( english conference bridge ) is understood in the telecommunications separate technical functional unit in central offices or remote servers (eg. As media servers) that allows to interconnect several participants to a conference. Such conference calls offer additional service features that are required for a large conference call and that go beyond a simple three-party conference .

Colloquially, the term conference call is often equated with the term telephone conference. However, it is only with the technical functional unit conference circuit that one can actually hold a telephone conference .

In the earlier analog telephone network , a conference call could be reserved and set up manually, or a telephone system with a corresponding number of connection lines was required for the initiating participant. In IP-based telecommunications networks, conference calls are provided by external media servers. Such conference calls can accommodate 200 or more participants and offer a wide range of services.

In the first analog telephone networks without active amplifier circuits, ideal conference circuits represent a challenging task in terms of circuit technology, which was first described theoretically by Vitold Belevitch with the help of the conference matrix .

Differentiation to related terms

By contrast is meant by conference line ( English conference circuit ) in the telecommunication an active or inactive speech channel in a telephone conference, at the end of a subscriber or other conference call is connected. If several telephone conferences are connected one after the other in this way, one also speaks of a daisy chain conference . For signaling reasons, however, this option does not exist for a conference call and is usually only possible for three-party conferences of analog participants.

literature

  • Volker Jung, Hans-Jürgen Warnecke (Hrsg.): Handbook for telecommunications. Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1998, ISBN 978-3-642-97703-9 .
  • Jose L. Encarnacao, Christoph Hornung, Utz Osterfeld (ed.): Telecommunication applications for small and medium-sized companies. Springer Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1996, ISBN 978-3-642-80326-0 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Vitold Belevitch: Theorem of 2 n -terminal networks with application to conference telephony. in Electrical Communication , 1950, Volume 26, pages 231 to 244