How many of my sip trunk channels does a conference call use? Say, for example, I arrange a conference call with 5 participants, 2 internal users connected to the pbx and 3 external users calling in to the conference from external numbers. How many channels will the conference occupy in the trunk?
Why would you think the answer is NOT three? (I’m not being sarcastic, I’m just curious if there is some lack of understanding that you need help with, that’s all.)
New to this… not sure how the conference call works, (to be true I’m still not sure how any of this works yet, but I’m learning:-) )My first guess would be three, but I can come up with explanations for 1, 4 and 6 as well… 1 - if all inbound callers shared one channel, 4 - 3 channels got tied up by the inbound callers and 1 by the conference, or 6 - 3 for inbound and 3 for the conference to call out.
No, because they’ve all dialed in individually. If they called an EXTERNAL conference, and that EXTERNAL conference made a single call coming in, then it would be a single channel.
Well, that’s plausible if the conference made an outgoing call to a fourth party
But the conference didn’t call out.
The answer is three 
Don’t try to overthink this. There’s nothing overly complex, and no rocket science (that YOU guys have to deal with!).
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Thanks for clarifying, I will continue to ask “stupid” questions to get the basic idea right.
By the way…
If I started a conference with my local coworkers, could I have the conference call an external number to connect a customer to the conference? Or would I have to call him from my extension and then transfer him to the conference?
Using UCP you can do that, yes. UCP is awesome!
(UCP is a part of FreePBX 12, btw, so if you’re not running 12, you don’t have it)
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