Collaborative conference bridges

A method and apparatus for executing a conference call session between parties provides collaboration between nodes having separate conference-bridging capabilities, so that selection from a number of alternative connectivity schemes can be based upon bridge-to-bridge negotiation. The selection of a connectivity scheme may be based upon one or more of cost and telecommunication resource availability. Selection may also be based upon stored historical data relating to prior conference calls involving at least one of said parties and/or upon historical data of patterns of node resource availability. A conference bridge (10) includes a user interface (16), a message interface (18), a connectivity computation component (14), a conference bridge manager (12), and a multimedia exchange component (23). An input to the connectivity computation component (14) includes a database (22) having tariff table information and resource-demand cycle information. Another input to this component is a load monitor (26) for continuously determining the availability of telecommunication resources. In the preferred embodiment, the method and apparatus allow dynamic reconfiguration of conference call connectivity when a time-dependent condition or a load-dependent condition is detected.