The Hindu : Front Page : Now hold teleconferences free of cost

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Sunday, Sep 28, 2008
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Front Page

Now hold teleconferences free of cost

Special Correspondent

Sabeer Bhatia, Yogesh Patel created ‘Sabse Bolo’
Over one lakh users have signed up

BANGALORE: The travails of air travel — including soaring fares — has persuaded many companies to hold teleconferences bringing together executives across multiple locations in a voice or video network

Typically it can cost a few thousand rupees to set up an audio conference for about half an hour, through specialist providers. Now, a canny duo of tech entrepreneurs – Sabeer Bhatia, the man who created Hotmail and Yogesh Patel, his partner in many subsequent start-ups have made it possible for lay users to set up a basic audio conference network of their own — for free.

It is called Sabse Bolo — talk to everyone — and within months of creating (there are also some paid versions, with more features) over one lakh users have signed up.

Once you register at the site ( www.sabsebolo.com), you receive a conference identification number and PIN (personal identification number), which you can share by email with all those you want linked. You also share the access phone number to log in at the conference. When all participants are logged in, you can carry out the conference by voice phone.

Local number

Last week Sabse Bolo added a local number for users in Bangalore, in addition to the earlier Mumbai number. Obviously any one can dial in – but people outside these two cities will have to make long distance calls.

The developers plan on adding other cities to their local call roster.

The service might not seem terribly interesting to lay users, (unless they want to set up an annual family talkathon!); but small businesses and groups of professionals will find ready use for this free tool.

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