FREE Conference Calls

Who says there is no free lunch?

"Even without VoIP, the conferencing industry has cause for concern, Gold said, citing FreeConference.com, a California-based operation that enables anyone to use its Web site to set up conferences at no charge beyond the cost of making long-distance calls to its California phone number.

"We're saying the emperor has no clothes," said Warren Jason, president of Integrated Data Concepts, the company that operates FreeConference.com. "Conference calls are easy and they should be cheap. Companies spend thousands of dollars on conferencing when they don't need to."

Jason's conferencing operation runs with just six employees. It makes most of its money selling premium service to large organizations such as General Electric Co. and the U.S. Postal Service. The free service recruits customers by word-of-mouth, so Jason doesn't need a sales force."