Do you frequently miss landline calls? Do you want to chuck your landline phone, but don’t want to get rid of the number?
If you’re tired of listening to your landline answering machine, there may be a solution: Swissvoice, a company that makes wireless home phones, has created a tool to connect your landline with your mobile devices. It’s called Voice Bridge, and you can use it to route landline calls to Android and iOS devices. Voice Bridge essentially transforms your mobile devices into an extension of your landline. It’s a minimalist box that requires very little setup — you just plug it in to your Wi-Fi router and then download the app from Google Play or the App Store. Once you do that, it works right away, and you can transfer your landline to up to five devices at once.
Voice Bridge also works for phone conferences, because it allows outgoing calls to be simultaneously transferred to two people on different devices. Voice Bridge also facilitates intercom calls between two smartphones or tablets. I can see it as a good solution for small offices, and you can connect iOS and Android devices to the service at the same time, no need for every device to have the same OS.
You can access your landline call history from your smartphone or tablet using Voice Bridge, and it provides alerts for missed calls and call waiting. And it syncs with your smartphone contact list, creating a caller ID using those contacts.
I honestly don’t see the advantage of having a landline at anymore (this is CES 2014, not CES 1998, c’mon) but if you do have a landline and you don’t want to miss calls while you’re away, this sounds like a genuinely incredibly useful tool. And if you’re ready to say goodbye to your physical landline phone but you want to keep the number, Voice Bridge will still work as long as the number is active.
Voice Bridge will be available for lovers of landline and mobile synchronicity in the U.S., South America, and Europe around March and April 2014, retailing for $80 USD.
