With so many new consumer gadgets going the way of wireless connectivity, it can be easy to forget about entire subsets of products that still use cables. Though landline telephones aren't as feature-packed or exciting as smartphones, they are still critical for businesses and homes everywhere. With the Swissvoice Voice Bridge, users will be able to combine the best of both worlds by taking landline calls on mobile devices.
Swissvoice has designed the Voice Bridge to transform smartphones into fixed phones that can handle both landline and cellular network calls. We've seen some products that turn smartphones into landlines, but Voice Bridge instead brings the old-school landline to the smartphone. Unveiled at CES 2015, the small box connects to a fixed line plug and, in conjunction with the free mobile app, routes all landline communications to up to five smartphones or tablets.
A notable convenience of the Voice Bridge is having access to one's address book. Users can choose a contact and make outgoing calls on the landline through a smartphone. Since smartphones tend to have large and updated contact lists, there's no need to selectively limit or program names and numbers as with standard cordless telephones.
If you have cellular dead zones in your home, Voice Bridge can also help you to work around that. Since Voice Bridge plugs into both a landline and an Ethernet port on a Wi-Fi router, a Wi-Fi connected smartphone can communicate with the Voice Bridge to send and receive calls through the landline.
In addition to its wireless features, the Voice Bridge lets registered devices intercom with each other and see the same list of landline call events. If someone is out of the office, the companion app notifies them of land line calls and messages received, helping users to stay in the loop.
The company highlights that there is no need for Wi-Fi pairing, creating user accounts, or modifying the existing telephone system. Based on this description, it sounds like the company is making setup and integration as simple as possible.
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge is available now on Amazon for US$99. The companion iOS app is compatible with all devices running iOS 7 or higher., and the company expects the Android app to launch sometime toward the end of September.
Source: Swissvoice
