Mobile Technology

Landlines (remember those?) can now go mobile with Voice Bridge

Landlines (remember those?) can now go mobile with Voice Bridge
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge features plug-and-play installation
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge features plug-and-play installation
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The Swissvoice Voice Bridge companion app is available now for iOS and soon for Android
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The Swissvoice Voice Bridge companion app is available now for iOS and soon for Android
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge features plug-and-play installation
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The Swissvoice Voice Bridge features plug-and-play installation
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge lets mobile devices make and receive landline calls
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The Swissvoice Voice Bridge lets mobile devices make and receive landline calls
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge works with smartphones and tablets
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The Swissvoice Voice Bridge works with smartphones and tablets
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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.

The Swissvoice Voice Bridge lets mobile devices make and receive landline calls
The Swissvoice Voice Bridge lets mobile devices make and receive landline calls

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

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3 comments
3 comments
rd500
SwissVoice looks nice. It has been on the market for nearly two years now since CES 2014. As landlines are fading away, it will be interesting to learn who are still willing to pay for this $99 USD box. Is it in wide-spread use already, in what country in the world? Not here in Taiwan, where a large population still maintain the landlines. It will be more difficult to sell in US, where unlimited dial plan are common for mobile phones.
There are obvious technical problems with SwissVoice, also: - It supports iOS only and Android users are out of luck; - It supports only wired RJ45 connection to AP Router, very inconvenient; - It supports LAN calls only within WiFi reach;
This Smart HomeX (www.zipcom.com.tw) offers many more and better features: - It supports both iOS and Android; - It suports wireless and wired connection to AP router; - It support WAN calls from anywhere in the world; - ... and many more.
Still, it may not be easy to embrace this down-trend landline market with either SwissVoice or Smart HomeX.
Camille
I am Camille from Swissvoice. Thanks for this article abd remarks on our product !
About Android: Voice Bridge app for Android is already in private Beta and will be made public by the end of September 2015 !
About the Wifi & LAN remark: we have focused on use cases that are easy to operate and set-up, and that's why we use ethernet LAN connection, and provide calls within the home only. This liberates the user form the hassles of WEP key entry, bad wifi coverage, and complex and customer specific NAT gateway traversal issues when you do voice over the WAN.
Please note that we do offer notifications of incoming calls when you are outside of home, so that the user can easily call bacl some one that tried to reachi him at home.
For any question on the device please contact us voicebridge@swissvoice.net

Wolf0579
Just heard on the radio on the way home from work, that ATT is trying phase out all landlines. No idea of the proposed timetable for doing so, but it's on the agenda.