Voice Bridge - Your Landline on Your Mobile

Summary: Connect this little box to your phone line (as if it were another phone), by Ethernet to a port on your home network router, and to power (USB power wall-wart supplied). Install an app on your iOS or Android smart-phone (or tablet), and then you can use the app to make outgoing calls on your land line, and take incoming calls (which ring on your smart-phone via the app as well as your land line phones). The remarkable thing is that this works even while you are away from home, as long as you have Internet access on your smart-phone (by mobile network or WiFi). Even with the smart-phone in sleep, the app is still alive in the background and wakes on an incoming call. THE GOOD: this product works brilliantly on iOS (in my case an iPad Pro Mini, but presumably any iPad or iPhone except the iPad is hard to hold to your ear!). Now works on Android too* (see below). * When purchased, the app for Android was still under development and only worked with some phones, in my case not with a Samsung Galaxy A3(2016). I was assured it worked with some smart-phones, and the developers said they are working hard to make the product compatible with all Android phones. As of February 2017, having requested access to the beta software testing, with my Android phone now on beta software version 5.2.1, my phone pairs with the Voice Bridge unit (when it wouldn't using 5.1.9), and I was able to place an outgoing call from my home WiFi network and from outside. I was having trouble picking up incoming calls though, and after discussion with the developers I was advised to disable power saving for the VoiceBridge app (Settings.. Battery.. App power saving), after which it has been working fine. Top marks to Invoxia, who seem very willing to help. If you find it's not compatible with your phone, contact them to see whether there is a software update available. THE BAD: there isn't any. It's a great product at a great price. TO BE AWARE OF: I found the product injected a noticeable hum or buzz on the phone line (although not apparent to external callers) when connected to my BT HomeHub4 or a Thomson TG585 router. This is not the case when a Netgear DGND3700 router is used, and I do not understand why there would be a difference. TO BE AWARE OF: In the previous version of this review, I queried the mechanism by which "On the Go" (ie connected via the Internet rather than the home WiFi) works. In their comment to this review, the developers say there is a server, using encrypted communications. This raises the question of what happens if for some reason Invoxia cease to be - presumably it will then only work at home and not On the Go (which is my reason for purchase). However, that said, this is one of only a very few options available. BONUS: I actually use the Voice Bridge downstream of a trueCall call filtering unit (intercepting or allowing through calls based on their caller-ID), and it works fine (only calls authorised to ring the home phones make it through the trueCall, and therefore I don't get nuisance calls to my VoiceBridge app either).

My initial experience with Voice Bridge was very positive. It is reasonably easy to install, surprisingly intuitive product that provides, assuming you have fast internet connection on both sides, quite good quality of phone calls. Alas, same cannot be said for app that is essential to use the gadget, and that is full of bugs, temperamental and overall unreliable, more so with time, and for the product and customer support that were bad to begin with but with time are getting worse and worse, at this stage to the point that after more than a month, other than acknowledgement of receipt of my request, nothing was communicated - so one is left high and dry with limited internet resources and no way to contact the support, as they are not replying to requests submitted on the web page. Pity, for the company obviously has capacity to create interesting products, but not to turn them into fully functional products ready for standard production, so everything is in beta testing phase, which is not good for a product that you pay for. I hope Invoxia will sort out the issues, but do not feel confident it will be any time soon, provided they still exist in a couple of years.

This is a great idea and seems to work very well. I don’t have a phone at home so all calls go through to my mobile. Very easy to set up but calls do seem to have a very loud echo and you can hear yourself repeat everything which is very annoying so you wouldn’t want to have to long a conversation. I vary rarely used my home phone so it just a way of receiving any important calls you might need to pick up while not at home.

I wonder why we still have a landline? We pay the rent on a landline because we have BT fibre broadband and for whatever reason just keep the landline that we have had for a couple of decades going. Our two grown children think it is very last century! We have 4 Bang & Olufsen DECT cordless land line phones which were state of the art 20 years ago but are looking very geriatric now and the expensive batteries keep failing. The volume is not good and the user interface is awful. The calls have no clarity and frankly we could hardly hear what anyone was saying and the caller ID is pretty well useless because we only have about 10 numbers programmed into them. We no longer use the B&O answer machine that came with our system and we spend 6 months of the year abroad and therefore no-one apart from close friends or the bank ever ring us on our land line. Enter Voice bridge!!!!! I always wonder if tech stuff is going to work when I buy it. Often the promises never quite make it to reality and it takes far longer than you think to set it up. Voice Bridge is easy. It really is. It sits in a cupboard next to our router and incoming BT line. We have Apple iPhones and the system works flawlessly. It's like getting four extra home phones and it rings wherever you are, whatever country you are in if you are on WIFI/4G. The voice quality is crystal clear. My one bugbear is that the selection of ring tones is horrible. Note to Invoxia - please sort that on the next update. Then we might ditch the B&O phones. One other thing to mention is that the house phones ring once before the system rings on the iPhones attached to voice bridge which I think is reasonable as the system will always have a slight delay

I bought and fitted this for a disabled friend, who spends most of their time with their mobile and their landline phone on or near them - this was an idea so they could just use one phone. I must say, for this it works really well. Their mobile takes and receives calls no problem and the quality is perfectly acceptable. It is not crystal clear, but it is good enough to have a conversation over without any issue. It set up really, really easily. Just followed the instructions, plugged it into the broadband router and power socket, used the app on their phone and it all just worked! great job. It is pretty expensive though. The actual box is surprisingly small, and easily hidden out of sight. If you have a need this fills then I would recommend it to anyone. We never used it away from the wifi network, so I do not know how it works outside the home.

My landline phone has terrible quality of voice. I hoped this would help and to some extent it did. It's easy to set up and get working, I have an Android Pixel 3 and my partner and iPhone 8. We installed the corresponding apps and was initially impressed by the quality and loudness of sound through the app. However, problems became apparent the more we used it. A lot of the times the app doesn't ring and hence I miss calls but what is worse is that when I'm on a call I can never be sure it won't drop out. I even take the trouble to get closer to the WiFi AP so that I have full signal strength due to the worry of it dropping the call, however, this appears not to help. It could be a good product and is exactly what I'm looking for, however, it is let down by the quality of the app and quality of the system, it really needs far more testing and quality control.

Great simple product once up & running it works extremely well, was very easy to install ie plug everything in but much more tricky to initially commission, it should have been a doodle from reading the instructions but for some reason it would not initially commission for me so I tried a factory default and tried again and it worked... the principality of how it works is ingenious I have to say by patching or (bridging) your mobile phone via VOIP back onto your home landline to make say free calls if you were away on holidays in a non free call mobile phone zone, or another use would be if you run a small business and you want your customers to see a landline when you ring them to look more professional this would work as well... or as other reviewers have stated if you wanted to use your mobile as way of always receiving your landline calls in the house or if away from home... only down fall here is that it will not provide caller ID for incoming landline calls unless the caller ID facilities have been enabled on your landline phone... that aside a fairly descent product for the money 👍🏻

A good idea but abysmal software (for iPhone). Manufacturer support contacted but no response beyond an automated "Your request has been received and is now in the hands of our support team." - so they are useless. So issues and no support (i.e. no commitment to rectify) I've had to return the thing and search out an alternative. Major Issues • On hang-up, locks-up (or drastically slows) everything on iPhone (probably using all CPU time) so End button does not work. Eventually managed to kill app and everything else then resumed working OK. You can't even turn the phone off. Happens every time (certainly on incoming calls). • When missed call, no "counter badge" on home screen icon to indicate you've missed anything • In notifier screen, touching alert automatically answers call (so you can't decline nuisance calls) • Every time app takes foreground it reverts to Home screen, even though app left in a different display (I find the Home screen particularly useless and dangerous as you only have to touch an entry and it immediately calls that number ! (and I pay for landline outgoing calls - so expensive)). This is really really annoying if you e.g. had just found a contact, switched to another app to check and then back into VoiceBridge and it immediately switches back to the Home screen. Scream. • Far far too easy to call a number from the Home or Recents screen. Get finger slight badly positioned in the circled "I" button and you are immediately calling that number over the PSTN line (even at 01:00am). Also, many have free mobile calls and pay for PSTN calls so this shortcoming costs money. I'd have implemented a setting "Confirm before making a call" so that you have existing behaviour or a 2nd confirmation depending on user preferences. • After you have answered and ended an incoming call you get a notification (and a beep) telling you you have "You have answered a call from xxxxx on your fixed line" - something you already know as you answered it, talked, etc - well seeing as you answered, talked then spent several minutes trying to kill off a locked-up app, you already know about the call! Other issues of lesser importance • When phone in Airplane mode, details of a previous call still gives the option to "Call using Cellular" - not a massive is.sue but shows the complete lack of care (and quality) in the app. There are few apps as "thrown together" as this app. So many poor design and poor implementation details. It needs a lot f work by developers familiar with iOS and familiar with small screen apps (which is quite a specialist area).

I have further updated my review to five stars. I have had the opportunity to use the replacement Voice Bridge away from home and am pleased with the way it works. I had to contact AT&T and have the number of rings before voice mail picks up changed to a higher number of rings so the voice bridge had a chance to alert me to an incoming call. If you need to originate and receive calls on a specific landline while you are away from home or away from the office, this device allows you to do so and works really well. I have updated my review from 1 star to 3 stars.Voice Bridge support determined that the unit I had was probably defective and shipped a replacement from France via DHL. It arrived in three days. The replacement booted up, updated, and was ready to use within less than five minutes. I was able to easily pair it with my iPhone and make and receive calls. I will be pleased to update my review again to 5 stars if it performs as advertised as I use it in the field over the next few days. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --ORIGINAL 1 STAR REVIEW -- Unfortunately, this device apparently either works or it doesn't. After following the simple three step installation instructions, if it doesn't work, support is limited to, "Is it plugged in". Once support figures out it is plugged in and still doesn't work, they apparently close the ticket and move on to someone else. There is no way that I could find to address the unit for troubleshooting. By looking at the status page of my wifi router, I was able to determine that it has been sending and receiving data packets without errors or dropouts for days, but that is all. It never fully boots up and updates so the blinking LED never goes steady indicating the unit is ready to use. Until the unit boots up, it cannot be discovered by the smartphone app. It was a good idea, but since it is not functional, it is going back to amazon tomorrow.

Ich habe zwar eigentlich auch eine Fritz Box, doch die Fritz! Fon App ist von 2013 und scheint nicht mehr gepflegt zu werden... was vermutlich der Grund für die vielen Abstürze, Verbindungsabbrüche und ausbleibende Anzeigen über eingehende Anrufe erklärt. Nachdem nun mein altes DECT Telefon den Geist aufgegeben hat habe ich mich nach etwas Neuem umgesehen und bin dabei auf die Voice Bridge gestoßen und aus Neugier direkt mal bestellt. Auspacken und Anschließen hat gerade einmal 5 Minuten gedauert, noch kurz App fürs iPhone runter laden und im lokalen WLAN in der App die neue Basisstation gesucht... und ich konnte von meinem iPhone über das Festnetz telefonieren, keine Konfiguration notwendig. Anrufe annehmen funktioniert ebenfalls sofort und wenn ich mal nicht zu Hause bin bekomme ich eine kleine Nachricht aufs iPhone über verpasste Anrufe, inkl. der Nummer, sofern nicht ohnehin anonym.

Very reliable, never had a problem.

Better than landline, better than cell phone :) , Landline in your mobile. Great product ! Good seller !

Je dois dire que c'est avec une certaine appréhension que je me suis finalement décidé à acheter ce produit tant les critiques étaient assez mitigées. Mais en fait il n'en est rien. Pour ma part tout s'est très bien passé. L'appareil fonctionne admirablement et remplit parfaitement ses fonctions aussi bien en réseau local qu'en extérieur avec une connexion 4G (voire peut-être même 3G). Je précise que j'ai une bonne connexion internet (réseau câblé 100 Mbps DL / 5 Mbps UP) et que j'ai également un très bon forfait téléphone où la 4G est presque partout. Il est vrai que lors de la première installation, il m'a fallu le réinitialiser en premier lieu et après il s’est connecté avec l’application. Au tout début, il ne réagissait pas tout de suite et les appels étaient pas toujours pris en compte malgré mes tests répétés. Je précise que j'ai bien mis l'application en mode de batterie non optimisé. Je me suis dit que je verrai ça un peu plus tard et au bout de 30 minutes il ne ratait plus un appel et fonctionnait du tonnerre ! Je n'avais pourtant rien fait de plus. Je suppose qu'il avait dû se mettre à jour ou s'était activé sur les services de Voice Bridge entre temps. Maintenant en ce qui concerne l'application, elle fait le job mais il y a tout de même de petits bugs sans gravité mais tout de même enquiquinants quand ils surviennent (heureusement pas souvent). Du genre un appel arrive et là le smartphone sonne mais on ne voit rien affiché à l'écran. Pour décrocher il faut aller dans les notifications. Quand on le sait, ce n'est pas un problème mais dans le cas contraire on se demande pourquoi le téléphone sonne sans préciser pourquoi. J'ai aussi eu quelques petits bugs de superposition graphique mais il suffisait de virer l'application des processus et de la relancer et c'était bon. Bref mettre l'application au goût du jour et d'y ajouter quelques fonctionnalités supplémentaires comme par exemple un système de liste blanche et liste noire, ce serait bien pratique, éventuellement aussi l'enregistrement de conversation.