Coincidence? I don't think so...
ACT is 20 years old this year. I’ll be 40 years old this year.
In the past 20 years, ACT has had a number of “firsts, bests and onlys”. (I have had a few in my 40 years, as well.) In 1997 ACT Conferencing delivered the first real-time allocation Global Reservations System (GRS). In the old days, when dealing with global conferencing companies, if a customer wanted to book an audio conference call in a different country, they had to call that center directly or wait until the office was staffed so liaising could happen. Real-time GRS allows callers to book their audio conference calls any time, in real time. Eerily, in 1997 I shifted course from a career in radio, to a career in Marketing, which would eventually lead me to ACT Conferencing. Coincidence?
Fast-forward ten years. In 2007, ACT Conferencing introduced Global Bridge Linking (GBL), which is like “meeting in the middle”. In other words, rather than calling an access number on the other side of the globe or having your provider backhaul your voice to central location, GBL allows ACT customers to access the call through a locally recognized toll-free number that terminates on a local bridge. The benefits are huge! With GBL, conference call users get an attendant with a familiar language and local accent, they get the same audio quality they have come to expect from ACT, and even better, GBL can reduce conference costs by up to 33 percent. (And these days, we all need that 33%.) To continue with the theme, also ten years later (in 2007), I had my first interview with ACT Conferencing. See how crazy the world works, sometimes?