Put on Mute : The Next person

I just figured out what is the most important application I need in my day today life. Putting another person on mute.

Check this out. You are on a conference call ( through a conference bridge). It is a very important call. This is a make or break deal. You and your subordinates are in the bridge taking the call from different locations. You have just about sealed the deal when your subordinate/colleague starts ranting about stuff that you know for a certain fact is going to make things go south. You want to yell at him to stop. But there is no way. He goes ahead and completes saying what he had to say and you are screwed.

How many of you face these problems on a day today basis? I know I do. Unwanted information being divulged out in conference calls. Wouldn't it be great that by a press of a DTMF you can mute the guy? There are a few challenges here. First thing would be how do you know which caller in the entire bridge to mute, as in what is the identification of each of these people in the conversation.

Now, this surely can't be done in a TDM world and SHOULD be possible in an IP environment. Is there any mechanism in any of the signalling protocols ( could be SIP/SCCP or anything) to make an endpoint be just in the 'recv' mode and not in the 'send-recv' mode. Can 3pcc have this kind of control?

As said before, if at all this can be done, it has to be IP. But trust me, I will buy the solution just to have this feature :) Too many goons saying too many things in conference calls is getting on my nerves!!!