Live Meeting User Group

Is there a document on the internet that explains this topic in simple language or is there someone here that can please explain how the Conference Provider plays a role in streaming the audio for a one-way internet audio broadcast (IAB)?  I recently upgraded to OLM 2007 and I did it through Intercall, Inc..  My Live Meeting 2007 system was set up with Intercall as the telephone conference provider.  I would greatly appreciate it if someone could please help me understand the role of the "conference provider" in one-way IAB where the audio source is a telephone.

I came from using LM 2003 and LM 2005 in a corporate environment and now I'm at a start-up trying to understand how to make OLM 2007 work.  I'm trying to do one-way internet audio broadcast webcasts for customer presentations where the attendees can only hear the audio.  In my previous corporate life, I would implement one-way internet audio broadcasts in LM 2003 by simply entering my own phone number into the audio panel as a presenter in Live Meeting.  Then I would "Test/Listen to Connection" to cause Live Meeting to dial my phone number.  Then I would answer the phone and create a manual conference call between Live Meeting <-> my phone <-> and a conference call with all the other presenters on it.

Now in OLM 2007, the system is forcing me to choose Intercall as my conference provider to enable the feature in Audio Menu that lets me have Live Meeting dial a phone to establish the connection for the one-way internet audio broadcast.  I don't understand why OLM 2007 has to have a conference provider selected to work? 

Is that because the phone call coming out of the Live Meeting server to my phone isn't free?  Someone has to pay for that call and so you have to have a conference provider to host that call coming out of Live Meeting and I have to pay whatever their per minute rate is to establish that connection between my phone and Live Meeting?  I had been hoping that I could just enter my phone number into Live Meeting and the system would call me and there wouldn't be any cost associated with that.

I've looked at all sorts of online documents on setting up audio in Live Meeting 2007 and I'm still confused on this topic.  I would greatly appreciate any help.

Thanks,

dlee388

Hmmm....difficult one this. Audio partners of Microsoft provide their own audio service (as they are audio providers). The Internet Audio Broadcasting function may be turned off. This is with good reason, as the audio providers have developed a higher level of audio integration with Live Meeting providing call control from within Microsoft's service. A very powerful tool.

If you need IAB, I would suggest at this time contacting Intercall and asking if they can provide this for you.