24Conference.com

For all practical purposes, the telecommunications system in the United States has a surplus capacity.  In other words, there is more than enough fiber optic, servers and voice of Internet (VOIP) hardware to accommodate today's needs.  However, something interesting has happened in the past few years.  During the daytime hours, conference calls only use about 25% of the conference bridge capacity in the United States.  That's amazing, considering how much conferencing is done by big business.  But around 8pm Eastern time, things change dramatically.  The conference bridges go from 25% capacity to 100%!  The reason?  Network marketing leaders have tens of thousands of their distributors and representatives calling from their homes to get the latest news about their businesses.  The stampede happens all at once and the conference bridges are working at full tilt.  And around 11pm Eastern, the opposite occurs.  The calls end as quickly as they started.  Because of the temporary crush on the system, we always advise our network marketing customers that one way to insure call quality is to avoid getting caught in the stampede and begin their conference calls at 15 minutes before the hour.  For example, 7:45pm, or 8:45pm.  That way, the long distance carriers can more comfortably route traffic and deliver the calls to the conference bridges to avoid pile ups and capacity problems.