Conference Bridge of the Future
I’ve been supporting telephony solutions in the corporate world for a number of years now for a variety of companies. For those who know, it can at times be challenging to provide an all in one simple and sleek solution for users to join an audioconference bridge in meeting rooms.
There are so many offerings in terms of SRS/MTR/Conference phone devices with speaker/mic systems that provides a decent level of audio quality. The days of passing round a phone or mic to cut our background noise should be a thing of the past.
We have today the knowhow and technology so that we can personalise this experience rather than relying on company provided devices and speaker mic systems that often get damaged or go missing. Not to mention the cabling disasters.
Almost everyone now owns a smartphone and a Bluetooth headset. Why are we not making it company policy for users to start utilising the technology they already own. with the rise of Microsoft Teams, UC is now beginning to take shape in a real and elegant way. Features such as chat, content sharing, video and voice is now a service delivered to anyone with a laptop and/or smartphone device.
It begs the question, do we need to be installing expensive and sometimes cumbersome SRS/MTR devices in to meeting rooms, or putting star/bat conference phones on long desks with extendable speakers. We should be educating our users to bring along their ‘smartphones’ and carry with them some Bluetooth headsets. That way a conference bridge is always at hand, all you need to remember is the mute button!
Of course there will always be a need for boardroom level VC and top of the range AV equipment, that’s not the issue here. Why can’t we get a team/project meeting going with our external parties by everyone bringing their own devices to the meeting room. If someone doesn’t have their phone with them, ok, stick a decent Bluetooth speaker in the meeting room cupboard and get someone to connect to it. Job done!
This is really all we need……works for me!
