[whughes]

There's a conference call scene in this (relevant, interesting, funny) video which I think applies to this topic:

http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-outsourc...

I think that it could become a liability to do this at some point, though. When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting at least some time. If a meeting is more effective in person, then have that meeting in person! You shouldn't be afraid to exclude one or two people if they're traveling; they're already excluded anyway. Why provide an illusion of close involvement?

[MichaelSalib]

When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting at least some time.

I've never noticed flaky microphones or audio quality from remote participants. Ever. But I've often found that local participants are completely inaudible. If every local participant just used a bluetooth microphone (or really anything dedicated but the shared conference call microphones), things would be so much better.