Teleconferencing

Teleconferencing enables multiple people to participate in a telephone call (audio only) simultaneously. IT-UMS has the capacity for 48 individual telephone calls (depending on availability) and the ability to conference them all together into a single call. The result is a meeting that can occur anywhere in the world with just a phone.

What's Needed

Participants need only a standard telephone to participate in a teleconference.

In order to schedule a teleconference, a list of all telephone numbers from participants needs to be gathered. These numbers are used to identify callers using CallerID to ensure they are placed in the correct conference. Multiple numbers for participants can be listed but we request that you limit to main number (home, office) and an alternate number (mobile).

Dial in or dial out

To initiate a teleconference, a call must be placed.

• Dial-out: If IT-UMS places the call, the phone of the participant will ring. When answered, the participant is immediately placed in the proper conference (based on CallerID information). IT-UMS may incur long distance line charges to place the call (see Costs below).
• Dial-in: If participants choose to dial in, a number will be given to the teleconference requester to pass to along to the participants. At the scheduled time, participants are able to dial into the conference. Your participants may incur long distance line charges for the call to Newark, DE.

Why the difference? Sometimes CallerID information is not available in certain areas of the country. In these limited cases, we must dial out.

Costs

At the University of Delaware, there are no equipment or staff fees associated with a video conference for academic purposes.

For non-academic teleconferences the rates are $.30/minute/site.

Additionally, all clients will incur long distance charges if IT-UMS must dial numbers that are long distance (outside of the New Castle County, DE calling area). In these cases, long distance fees will be passed directly to the client.

Pre-testing

A pre-testing period allows participants to test the teleconferencing system to ensure they are able to participate. This is usually scheduled at least two days before the event date and helps to reduce technical problems. A pre-testing window is usually an hour long and is hosted by someone from your staff and an IT-UMS staff member.

Scheduling

To schedule a teleconference, please notify IT-UMS as soon as possible.