Just found that our LD provider (Nuvox) will no longer connect us to our voice conference provider (Acrobat Connect); it's all part of the "traffic pumping" stuff going on around the midwest USA. Apparently local telcos are allowed to charge vastly higher rates, and some businesses (legit and shady alike) are moving to set up shop and take in revenue due to these higher rates.

FWIW, the voice conference service is at 218-486-2202. AT&T cell phones can call it fine, but our LD carrier and some of our customers are finding that they can't get connected. I filed a trouble ticket with Nuvox and they state it's due to carrier issues--not a busy signal, but a real "call abandoned/we don't talk to them" issue.

SO... that all said, I need to find a low-cost voice conference provider not likely to have this "midwestern phone flu". Any recommendations? Has anyone else seen this from their own provider? IIRC, AT&T just got the smackdown from the FCC sometime in the past year or two on this precise issue.

I'm really surprised the LD carriers didn't put their foot down on this a long time ago. The law was put into place to help the mom and pop phone companies. Like all things that start out good some slime ball comes along and figures out how to take advantage of others good intentions and ruins it for everyone.

This is one I've used in the past, they have a paid for service also. You can contact them and see how much their paid service is. I haven't used them in a long time. www.freeconference.com

We're also looking for a solution to this problem. It seems to me the most cost effective method will be to have a stand alone conference bridge that supports SIP trunking. The only problem is that I haven't found such a box yet.

I just found this. Looks interesting https://www.epygi.com/quadro-cs/71/