Index to Frequently Asked Questions

• How is Telebridge being used by companies?
• How else is Telebridge being used?
• How much does it cost?
• How does Telebridge work?
• What are the advantages of using Telebridge?
• Why is Telebridge better than other conference-calling providers?
• May I reserve a bridge for 30 minutes on the half hour?
• Do you offer caller mute on your bridges?
• Do you offer recording of my teleconferences?
• How do I get started?
• How can I determine how many people have joined the conference call?
• Do you have any toll free bridges?
• May I cancel my reservations if I change my mind?
• What do I do if I get a "fast busy" signal or a message that all circuits are busy?
• Can I make a standing reservation for the same time each week or month? (see #4)
• How do I get help?

How is Telebridge being used?

Coach U conducts many TeleClasses each week to students in 50 states and overseas. These students are learning how to be professional coaches/consultants and tap in each week for a TeleClass, led by a Coach U Trainer.

Smythe, Jefferson and Arbuckle, a consulting firm, conducts a weekly followup for the executives in their Leadership Program who recently completed an in-person 2-day training at the client's headquarters. This allows the executives to maintain focus and continue to learn as they apply the principles they discussed during the training.

An Eastern Bank uses the Telebridge to host a monthly meeting of all branch managers in the New Jersey region. This bonds the managers, fosters team and offers a live supplement to the daily email the managers use with the regional director.

The sales manager hosts a 15 minute PepTalk each business morning from 8:00-8:15am for his 12 sales reps scattered around the US. Each sets a sales TARGET for the day, the group sets a team goal, each rep gets motivated by the synergy and they have a strong focus for the day because EVERYONE is playing the right game.

Other Great Ways Our Customers Use the System

1. Group Coaching/Consulting. Put 5 clients with similar needs on the same call each week and help them coach each other.

2. Group Training. Need to train folks who live in different cities, states or countries? Put them together on a call for several months and they will learn.

3. Teaching Classes. Have an expertise? Want to teach others? Want to set up a virtual school? All you need is our bridge and your ideas.

4. Special Interest Groups. Are you a member of a club or group with a specific interest that would do well meeting regularly? The bridge is the solution.

5. Expert Desk. Why not open up an hour or two a week of your time to share your expertise with others? Just schedule a call on the bridge, pass around that number and coach/answer questions for anyone who calls in. This is a great business/practice builder.

6. Sales Pep Talks. Are you a sales manager? Need to keep your sales people motivated and focused every day or every week? The BEST way to do this is to put them on a daily call for 15-30 minutes and watch the results increase!

7. Family Get Togethers. Really! Several customers have a monthly family gathering and they LOVE IT!

8. 12-step Meetings. Actually, we don't have any customers using the bridge for this, but we think it's a great idea. Anonymity!

9. Brain Storming/Collaborative Sessions. Are you part of a group that's creating something? Come together each week for some real-time creative conversation.

10. Think Tanks. Are you focused on discussing some big issues with others around the country/world? You're probably already using email for this, but there's nothing like the true interactive/rich experience of a real conversation.

How much does it cost?

The fee for the telebridge is paid by the representative or host of the group, not each participant in the teleconference. Each teleconference caller will incur a standard long distance toll charge to dial the location of the bridge (Nevada, Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Texas or Oklahoma). This is as low as $2-6/hour depending on one's long distance carrier.

Therefore, the Telebridge usage cost works out to less than 1-2 cents a minute per person vs the 25-45 cents a minute per person that many conferencing companies charge. Your company will realize substantial savings.

Smaller bridges connect up to 30 simultaneous callers. Larger bridges connect up to 200 simultaneous callers. Varying sizes are available for hourly use.

Using a telebridge (hourly)

If you only want to use a bridge for a few hours a month and don't need your own bridge number, you can retain one of our bridges by the hour. Our 30-person bridges are priced at $10 per hour, while our 100- and 200-person bridges with PIN number and mute features are $20 and $25 per hour, respectively. In order to establish an account, we will charge you a one-time set-up fee of $25.

Using a telebridge full-time (monthly)

We price our telebridges so that it is quite attractive to obtain your own full-time bridge. This gives you the advantage of controlling your own bridge schedule to ensure that the bridge is always available when you need it.

The setup fee for a full-time bridge is a one-time charge of $50. Telebridge offers the following full-time bridges with their corresponding monthly charges:

Longer term agreements are not available although you may continue to secure the same bridge on an ongoing basis.

How to pay for the telebridge services

You may pay for the telebridge by credit card or check.

A $25 set up fee is due when you set up your hourly account, and payment for hours reserved is due the first of the month for any unpaid reservations made.

A $50 set up fee is due when you initiate a monthly account along with the first month's procurement fee. Subsequent payments may be made monthly. Please use our convenient and secure forms to request your hourly or monthly accounts.

How does Telebridge work?

Let's say you wanted to host a TeleMeeting with 15 of your managers, and did not want to obtain your own full time bridge. Here are the steps:

The first time only, please setup a Telebridge account, providing your credit card information on our new account setup page.

Use your account ID and password to choose your conferencing bridge and your time slot from our Telebridge Reservations page. When making a telebridge reservation, all reservations are automatically made for one hour unless you indicate that you want more hours under the section called "repeating". Repeating "Hourly" means you want your conference call to last longer than one hour.

Indicate the number of hours you want repeated under the section "number of hours".

Each time you return to the "add or modify reservation" window, please check the "Eastern Time Hour" category to make sure the hour you want your call to occur is properly selected.

To repeat a reservation at another interval (daily, weekly, or monthly) for example, the third Wednesday each month, enter in the "number of hours" box the number of one-hour reservations you'd like to make and then choose the method of repetition from the "repeating" menu.

Inform your managers of the time and telebridge number (same for all).

Everyone dials the same bridge number at the scheduled time, the bridge connects all callers in an audio conferencing "room".

Presto, you're all on! No operator, no delays.

Conduct your meeting, and hang up when you're done.

That's it!

What are the Advantages of Telebridge?

• Convenience. Everyone can dial in from anywhere -- no waiting/prep time.
• Low cost. Telebridge is 50-80% less than operator-assisted conference calls.
• More contact. The more people are connected the more they can produce.
• International Presence. You can be everywhere at once, every day. Telebridge makes this possible.
• 24-hour, 365-day access and service. The system can be reserved for any time period, up to one year in advance.

Why is Telebridge better than other conference-calling providers?

There are many providers offering call-conferencing services. For many individuals and customers, our service is the easiest and best to use because:

Low Cost. We charge by the hour or month, not per person. This is a real savings, especially for groups over 10. The callers themselves pay for the long distance call, but this can be as low at $5/hour after 5pm, depending on the caller's long distance carrier. It's just a standard long distance call. You, as the host, pay the per-hour, per-month, per-quarter, or per-year fee.

High Reliability. Our teleconferencing system is used by scores of clients including Coach U coaches, educational institutions, international audiences, non-profit organizations and network marketers.

Full Control. Once you've reserved your bridge time, we give you the single access number that you can give out to all your callers. You can schedule the bridge number you want to use. You may choose the same number each time and make your associate's lives easier. Plus, once you have your one hour time slot, you can use the time in any way you want to -- host two 30-minute calls or one 1-hour call or four 15-minute calls -- whatever you wish.

Fully Automatic. Once you have your time slot reserved on the bridges, there's nothing else you need to bother with -- no operators, no PIN numbers, no hassle. At any time during your scheduled time slot you or anyone you've given the access number to can dial in -- they can even be late -- nothing to interrupt your meeting or delay your participants.

Satisfaction Guarantee. If you are not satisfied in any way, please ask for your money back. We'll return it the next day. We want you to be happy.

One Caveat. Telephone companies sometimes oversell their capacity. There may be occasional periods of time when you may experience difficulty getting the full capacity from the bridge because not enough long distance circuits are available. We can't guarantee 100% availability of full capacity on your bridge. You may be able to use "10-10" numbers to get around this. Click here for more info.

May I reserve a bridge for 30 minutes on the half hour?

Sorry. You may reserve the telebridge in blocks of 1-hour on the hour. You may use the bridge for thirty minutes if you wish.You may reserve the same hour every day, every week, every other week, or every month. If you want to meet on the half hour for one hour, you can reserve two hours. If you think your meeting may run slightly more than one hour, please reserve two hours.

Do You Offer Caller Mute to Eliminate Background Noise?

Yes, we recommend caller mute on all calls where you expect more than 30 people. All of our bridges utilize PIN codes for access, enabling the conference leader to place conference attendees on mute and provide control over distracting background noise. The conference can be un-muted to ask for questions and comments from the group. Caller mute is available on all of the bridges.

Conference hosts receive a PIN number and conference guests receive a different PIN number. Conference hosts have the ability to place the conference in "lecture mode," in which none of the conference guests may be heard. This effectively blocks any background noise.

Do you offer recording of my teleconferences?

Hourly Telebridge customers may record their teleconference and then order an copy of the call on cassette, CD or FTP audio file. Recordings remain on the Telebridge for several weeks. We recommend ordering your copy right away to ensure they can be retrieved.

Full-time Telebridge customers may record their teleconference and listen to playback on the Telebridge during the specified period. For more information about the amount of time the recordings are available, email us or call 503-335-3442 between 9:00 and 5:00, Pacific Time.

An ftp audio file is your conference call recording in digital format that can be accessed from a web site or your computer's hard drive. In order for others to listen to the recording, it must be uploaded to a server for them to have access. If you choose to have an ftp audio file of your recording available for others to hear, you will want to determine what web site you want them to visit to access the recording. We will require the host name, user ID and password of the server in order to upload your recording.

A CD or cassette format of your conference call recording is shipped to the address you provide on our website order form.

How Do I get Started?

If you are interested in a monthly Telebridge, visit our secure application page, fill out the form, and we'll respond within 48 hours. You may pay by credit card or by check.

For hourly customers, it's even easier. Visit our setup page to obtain your account id and password. We'll setup your account and notify you within 24 hours. Then visit our hourly reservations page to book your reservation. You will receive an immediate email confirmation of your reservation. No waiting! All reservations are made on-line by the customer.

Please also review our Tips for Leaders and Tips for Participants. They explain more about how the telebridge and reservations systems work, and offer advice on how to make sure you have a smooth and enjoyable teleconference.

If you have further questions or just want to talk with someone, e-mail or call us between 9:00 and 5:00, Pacific Time, at (503) 335-3442. Leave a confidential voice mail if you reach a recording.

How can I determine how many people have joined the conference call?

Take roll call asking people to state their name as they join the conference call. You might say something like, "Who just joined us?". You can also have someone count the number of times the phone beeps as people come on the line. Telebridge Teleconferencing has no way to research how many people were on your call.

Do you have any toll free bridges?

Sorry, we do not offer toll free bridges.

If you want this ability, we recommend that you arrange for your own 800 number and forward your number to the bridge that you are using full-time. Or you may have the 800 number point to a bridge for an hour that you are using.

May I cancel my reservations if I change my mind?

You may change, but not cancel your reservations. Please choose your time carefully. Remember that all reservations are scheduled by the Eastern time zone. You are responsible for paying for any reservations that you make.

If you make a mistake while you are reserving time, you may reschedule for a different time. To reschedule, within the Telebridge Scheduling System, return to the "Telebridge User Options Page". Click on "Show Reservations". You will be shown a list of your reservations. Click on the line which lists the "Start Time" of the reservation you want to change. (Only future times will be underlined links.) At the "Add or Modify" page, change the time and/or date and/or selected bridge and click on "Save Hours".

How do I get help?

Part of the reason we are able to offer rates as low as 1 to 2 cents per minute per person (as opposed to the 30-45 cents per minute per person that many conferencing companies charge) is that we do not offer 24 hour live customer service. Our system is fully automated so that you may make reservations and use your bridges at all hours. Should you need help in scheduling, please plan ahead so that you may reach us during our hours of availibility.

For help, please email help@telebridge.com or phone Eddy Marie Crouch at 503-335-3442 between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Pacific Time, Monday-Friday.