Patent ID: 7852998

Claim:
A teleconferencing control system that simultaneously out dials to multiple selected conferees through a plurality of parallel telecommunications resources, comprising: a teleconferencing controller in communication with a plurality of available parallel telephony communications connection resources; wherein upon receiving a predetermined trigger to initiate said conference call between said multiple selected conferees, or upon being triggered by a predefined set of conditions, said teleconferencing control system initiates said conference call, wherein said teleconferencing controller establishes a telecommunications connection simultaneously, between as many of said multiple selected conferees as can be contacted, said teleconferencing controller including: means for accessing a list of said multiple selected conferees, said list at a minimum including an entry for each one of said multiple selected conferees, each said entry containing at least sufficient information to enable said teleconferencing control system to attempt a simultaneous telecommunications connection with the associated one of said multiple selected conferees to deliver an invitation to said conference call and each said entry being updated according to the statistics data; means for simultaneously initiating connection attempts to a plurality of said multiple selected conferees, wherein at least two of said connection attempts are routed through separate parallel connection resources of said plurality of available parallel telephony communications connection resources; and means for minimizing a total time elapsed to connect each of said multiple selected conferees to said conference call by using said updated entry; wherein upon connection to each one of said multiple selected conferees, said teleconferencing controller enables said one of said multiple selected conferees to participate in said conference call based upon an acceptance of said invitation to said conference call.