So, over the past couple of calls, it has been noted that the quality of the calls has been somewhat … bad …
I am looking into new solutions and one that I have, would be a a conference call based system based on a FreePBX setup I currently have, where you’d have to dial in from an actual phone, such as some do when we’ve used Jitsi.
This would mean however, that there would be no video stream, but we can have a separate live chat.
How would you feel about this, would you miss the video capability, or not. Seeing as the majority have their cams turned off, I thought this might be the way to go.
I currently use it for MediaBlaze Hosts and has worked rather well.
Fwiw, our co-op also uses Jitsi. I am experiencing call quality issues and generally feeling lost productivity on our calls due to it. I personally seem to be having the most trouble of our group, on my old rattling system. (Similarly, we often end up turning off all cameras to troubleshoot someone with slow bandwidth.)
Having said all that: The Jitsi mobile android app is much more stable and less bandwidth intensive. It can be audio-only, and then consumes only a fraction of the 1.5GB of a standard 60-min call on desktop. I’ve had success using mobile app for stable audio-only, with desktop for video/screenshare as a bonus (which is less disruptive to restart if issues begin)
Personally, although I understand some people don’t want it on, I think video is really helpful - for getting some sense of body language, knowing easily who is speaking etc.
i agree with Pete on this. Video does add something. I was intending to get a webcam for next time.
And also, re using phone: that did work on the one occasion i participated (last time) but tying up the phone line might not be so popular in the office, some times…?
We use appear.in, now dreadfully renamed to whereby due to a lawsuit. It works very well but it only allows up to 12 people. I can set up a room for us to use since we have never had 12 people but may not work in the long term…
Also @liam can we confirm the date and time of the next call? I am guessing this is Wednesday 25th September at 4pm?
