‘Hot’ Teleconferencing savings…

The following ‘open letter’ to NonProfits and small businesses, who may need to run teleconferences for less than 30, has been sent to us. Please do your own research as well, our adviser says…there may well be even better deals around!

“I recently took on a new business development role assisting a group of 11 educators throughout Australia who specialise in training land managers in regenerative land management. To optimise the flow of information I’m keen to institute regular teleconferences.

With this as a background I researched the providers of teleconference services and was, to be quite frank, alarmed to see just how expensive Telstra is in this area. I spoke with one of their sales representatives who basically said that Telstra is only interested in being competitive in the ‘big end’ of the market, and as such they will only negotiate better deals for businesses which have teleconference costs of over $1,000 per month.

I decided to sign up the Melbourne based company, HotAir Conferencing Pty Limited. This company uses the same technology as the major teleconferencing companies but charge around 50 % of their competitors’ fee levels.

In addition they provide further reduced prices for charities and nonprofit organisations – Telstra does not. The cost of a HotAir Conferencing metered teleconference call (where those ringing in to the conference do so at their own cost to HotAir Conferencing’s Melbourne number) for a NonProfit organisation for a one hour teleconference during business hours for 14 people is around $95 including GST. A similar call with Telstra using their operator hosted FreeCall (where those calling in do not get charged for doing so) option costs close to $700. The sign-up process with HotAir Conferencing involves about a 20 minute telephone call.”