Voice Bridge - Landline Calls On Your Mobile

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.

We are landline diehards. Despite regularly employing cellphones and many VOIP systems for years – we always turn to the landline as our final goto….for routing around the many communications difficulties any user faces today.Properly exploited, a landline provides a guaranteed, unshared, completely “owned” connection with your calling party. Even in 2017. When companies routinely renege on promises and communications failure is the norm.So when we spotted this landline bridge device at Amazon – it was ordered immediately. This is a class of tool we had been seeking for decades – and had actually considered building our own. But our own project had languished due to the many difficulties of forwarding voice through the internet in near real time.The internet was never built for such duty. That’s why so many of us face these never ending bad phone connections every day.But SwissVoice (the original developer of this box) and Broadsoft (large cloud VOIP supplier now owned by Cisco) mostly solved this problem. Accordingly, the relayed voice is almost indistinguishable from a real land line circuit. This is a real accomplishment. Both companies have reason to be proud of this work as it was a difficult feat to pull off….Invoxia apparently acquired SwissVoice or this individual product (my head spins can’t tell who owns what). And Invoxia is the party selling through Amazon.Again, this was a difficult feat...but SwissVoice mostly pulled it off. And I suppose if all telecommunications carriers adhered to the rules – this box would work fine. Unfortunately, in the real world we live in – carriers often split local area codes into local and long distance. And there is no way to ever know which “bin” a dialed number is assigned until you dial it.And that’s a real problem with this box. Even if you stumble upon the “magic instructions” to insert all local area codes into a whitelist – so that dialout with the “1” prefix can be avoided...you will inevitably run into situations which don’t fit the rules. So when dialing out manually, the DTMF signals are rejected (at least on our central office switch). And no matter how hard you try to circumvent this – you will fail. You’ll get the carrier’s recording. Over and over again :(Now if you dial from your iphone contact list and simply insert a pause before the complete 1+number – this box will dial properly without issue. Since there is no provision for entering a pause during manual dialing – that is your fix. And it’s cumbersome. Very impractical for everyday use.Things difficult to use are never used…..We have tried to communicate the seriousness of this defect to Invoxia in vain. While their support ostensibly works out of Paris – we see little difference in their responses from some of the scripted “eight ball” answers you might receive from support originating in Bangladesh. They just can’t seem to understand this is a bug worth fixing.Which is a shame, because this is an innovative product. A unicorn. And it’s likely to be killed off by an acquiring company which doesn’t understand it. Worse, the proper fix is likely a trivial one they can execute within their own cloud system. Might not require hardware reprogramming at all.Hence my one star rating. It’s gotta work. And no amount of yabbering can take the place of a real fix.I do have a workaround for the dialing defect. You simply dial *67 prior to your 1 + 10 digit number. *67 normally turns off caller ID. But since this bridge’s dialing is defective – it will fail to turn off your caller id and Will dial your number :) An inelegant cheat – but it works. There may be others.Now if Invoxia tracks down a real engineer and fixes this – I’ll change my rating to five stars. But I’m not holding my breath.The sad truth is that most people don’t have the time to deal with flawed hardware which manufacturers won’t fix. So their optimal move is to ruthlessly rid themselves of such products.We’re keeping ours despite the defect...but would advise others to steer clear. You don’t need this grief.

I have been dumfounded by how well this works. Looking at how it connects, it should not work at all.The voice bridge is a little box with 3 connections: power, analog phone, and router. When forwarding an unanswered phone call, it must be doing so via the router alone. The analog phone line is never answered so the Voice Bridge cannot be using the analog phone line to connect the mobile.When the mobile is within range of the router, the Voice Bridge and App could be communicating on local network. However, how does that work when the mobile is outside the range of the router? That question nagged me for more than a week.I now think the answer must be that both the Voice Bridge and the App communicate via some external site. They both connect to the site as clients (not servers). The site ties them together.Now, postulating that the App is polling an external web site, what does this mean for mobile battery life? I think this means the App depletes your battery. Indeed, I have observed reduced battery life on my iPhone of late. The battery loses about 40% of charge overnight if not plugged in.So, be warned. I think the App used to support the functionality runs down your battery (~ 40% in 8 hours). You may decide this is worth it. I am sharing this speculation/detective work so you can decide for yourself before paying. For myself, I do consider it worth it.I have phones which do not have have wireless plans. Can this device make them usable as a phone since the box connects outward only via the router? No. I don't think so fully. My analysis is that the App need to make an outgoing wireless connection to web site and polls. Thus, I expect the phone needs a wireless plan or be connected via wi-fi to be usable as a phone