100 years of hold music: why is audio conferencing still with us?

Death, where is thy sting?

Imagine the excitement when the first conference call was made 100 years ago. The telephone itself was still pretty new, but suddenly it was possible (after much laying of cable and switchboard jiggery pokery by the operator) to have a conversation rather than just a dialogue over the wires. Alexander Graham Bell placed the call from New York to San Francisco, where Thomas Watson answered. The call was then joined by Theodore Vail, president of AT&T, and then, from the White House, by US president Woodrow Wilson.

Much of the subsequent work in making telephone conferencing more widely available was performed in the 1940s and 1950s by telecommunications engineer and inventor Walter L Shaw, who patented technologies for the conference call as well as for touch-tone phones, call forwarding and the red telephone link between the USA and the former Soviet Union.

Unfortunately when ownership of his ideas was not recognised by his employers AT&T and later Bell Labs, he became embittered and sold another of his ideas, the ‘blue box' untraceable call device, to the Mafia, a crime for which he was jailed in 1975. The blue box was later taken up by two guys named Steve, Jobs and Wozniak, who used it for making prank calls to the Vatican, but that's another story.

The concept of teleconferencing didn't really take off until the 1960s when, acting on Shaw's ideas, devices from the likes of Bell Labs and AT&T made telephone conferencing and even early video conferencing available to businesses. But like the computers of that era, the devices were far too expensive and unreliable to be of much use to any but a select few. Subsequent technological advances such as IRC and SIP trunking have made audio conferencing far more reliable and affordable, but at the same time the mobile revolution has added challenges of its own owing to reception blackspots.

Other communications technologies also have arrived, including functioning HD video and web conferencing as well as multi-party messaging and collaboration platforms; in fact there has been an explosion in ways for work groups to collaborate and keep in touch. Yet, perhaps because everyone is familiar with how it works, audio conferencing remains a very popular - perhaps still the most popular - way for multiple people to meet up to get things done from wherever they are located.

Popular it may be in numbers terms but that's not the same thing as being popular with those who spend large parts of their working lives misdialling long entry codes, enduring tedious hold music and making embarrassing small talk while waiting for participants to arrive.

A necessary evil

Conference calling is undoubtedly very useful, even if the wonder has long since departed. It has meant far fewer unnecessary journeys and saved organisations a lot of time, money and hassle. Indeed, 28 per cent of the 150 IT professionals polled by Computing said conference calls are really helpful in keeping everyone 'on the same page'. However, most people seem to have a weary acceptance of voice conferencing at best, with the largest single proportion describing it as a necessary evil (figure 1).

Broken etiquette

Because audio conference calls are often joined by callers who feel they are wearing a cloak of invisibility by virtue of being in their own home, the technology has given rise to its own rules and etiquette, around being punctual, not talking out of turn and being mindful of background noise. Nonetheless, these unwritten rules are constantly being broken.

100 years of hold music: why is audio conferencing still with us?

Death, where is thy sting?

We asked our respondents to list their biggest bugbears with audio conference calls. Sixty per cent said that they were frustrated by people talking over each other, a consequence of a lack of nonverbal signals. Just over a third told us that they were irritated by people getting cut off due to bad connections. Almost the same percentage (31 per cent) dreaded the uncomfortable silence before all respondents arrive. Twenty-eight per cent were annoyed by people who talk continuously being unable to gauge the lack of interest of others, while 20 per cent were bothered by ‘lurkers' - people who fail to introduce themselves and sit silently, contributing nothing. A number of respondents (18 per cent) also reported being irritated by long and overly complicated passcodes (figure 2).

The ability to join conference calls from anywhere is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it facilitates collaboration, but on the other participants can be easily distracted. For example, 30 per cent admitted to taking calls in the street, 22 per cent from the toilet and 12 per cent while cleaning the house or walking the dog.

"I lost interest and did not realise I was being asked a question, and then I didn't know what the question was," said one respondent, voicing what is surely a common experience to those who spend a lot of time on conference calls. The disembodied, semi-detached nature of the conference calls means that people tend to tune in and out, or forget that other people might be listening in.

"I had a deep and meaningful with an employee at my desk while waiting for a conference to start. The mic was on and the room was full by the time I finished, and they heard the lot," another person admitted.

Indeed, failure to master the mute button was the most common cause for embarrassment. Another respondent related having to listen to a heated marital tiff as a result of such an oversight by the warring parties.

Among other issues mentioned were those resulting from the inability to see who you are talking to ("I assumed someone was a man but it turned out she was a woman"; "I made disparaging remarks about someone not realising they were on the call") and the difficulty in establishing leadership and direction when having to rely only on nonvisual signals.

Connectivity and call quality were other frequently mentioned topics, with attendees - generally those on mobile devices - being dropped off calls, and others experiencing intrusive levels of background noise, either because a caller is dialling in from a noisy environment or because of problems with transmission.

Given the large number of potential bear traps inherent in the process of conference calling, it is perhaps surprising that it has endured (and been endured) for so long, particularly given that viable alternatives are available. Asked about the advantages of the most obvious alternative, video conferencing, over the audio version, only six per cent said there were none. The largest number (57 per cent) rated video for the ability to put a face to a voice, while 51 per cent said that they thought people were more inclined to pay attention when they were on a video call (figure 3).

However, despite these advantages video conferencing was in widespread use at just 28 per cent of the workplaces of those surveyed. The necessity of a screen may be one factor; the unreliable nature of 3G/4G connectivity another; but it was ease of use, efficient consumption of bandwidth and compatibility with multiple platforms that topped the list of features people wanted to see.

Perhaps the main thing going for audio conferencing is its universality and simplicity. Whatever the frustrations it induces - and there are many - there's surely a few more years in the century-old invention yet.