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In response to recent actions by the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee, regarding free conferencing services and the individuals and businesses that use them, Global Conference Partners, has initiated an advocacy campaign to rally support from its users.

The rallying cry of Global Conference Partners to “Save Free Conferencing” was met with equal enthusiasm from its users, where more than 100,000 letters were sent to their local congressmen in less than a week. The letters voiced opposition for any potential regulation that could stop their ability to run their businesses and organizations using critical services like FreeConference.com.

“Eliminating the ability to communicate with your business and non-profit colleagues through free teleconferencing services is unfair, unacceptable and anti-competitive,” Ken Ford, CEO of Global Conference Partners, said. “It’s a weak argument to stop a service so integral to businesses, organizations, non-profits and even government agencies, over concerns that indecent conversations may be taking place on phone lines. Phone (News - Alert) conversations are a private matter and alleging that our services are used solely for indecent communications is insulting to our customers.”

It has been noted by Global Conference Partners that there are more than 50 FreeConference.com users working in the U.S. Senate, and 132 users working in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Congress in total to date has benefited from the use of more than a half-million minutes in free conference calls. FreeConference.com services are also used by individuals within the Dept. of Justice, the State Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Postal Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Dept. of Agriculture, and the NIH.

Ford said an additional concern voiced in a recent letter from the Energy and Commerce Committee to several small telephone companies who are instrumental in helping to bring free conferencing to users:

“The government is concerned that when some Internet-based voice services choose not to connect to certain rural telephone areas that may carry higher connection charges, the consumer ultimately bears the brunt in the form of reduced access to Internet voice services and thus higher charges,” he said. “On the other hand, the incremental revenue that has been generated from free conferencing services has allowed many rural telephone companies to upgrade their communication infrastructure and provide their customers with the type of services that big cities regularly enjoy.”

In related news, a new organization, FreeConference has sprung up to help the relief efforts in Haiti. It has connected volunteers from several countries around the world. The speed of this coordinated effort has been most impressive, say the officials of FreeConference.