A desktop Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone is truly a remarkable device, but it’s not exactly very portable. That’s where the VoIP App steps in. If you’re someone who’s frequently away from your office (or desk), but you want to make and receive calls using your work telephone number, then I want to tell you about my new favorite phone app. I use it on my iPhone 4s, but read on to find out which other devices you can use the VoIP App with.
A company known as CounterPath, has developed an application, Bria, which is known as a “softphone” (as in, “software phone”). The Bria VoIP App makes your VoIP desktop phone portable by seamlessly integrating it with your cellular phone. The Bria VoIP App also uses encryption, which is especially important for those in certain industries with strict privacy regulations.
What Can Your Phone Do With the Bria VoIP App?
The following are just a handful of the features offered by the Bria VoIP App:
For this example, imagine that your office number is 1-855-783-2332
With the Bria VoIP App on Your Cell Phone, you can:
- Receive incoming calls made to your office’s number (1-855-783-2332)
- Make calls using your office’s number (when you call from the application, the person whom you called will see your office number (1-855-783-2332) and not your cell phone number!).
- Great if you need to call clients while you’re away from the office, but you don’t want them to have your personal cell phone or home number.
- Dial any extension (typically 4 digits) for any number in your office telephone system network, and be connected — just as if you were calling from your desk phone!
- Begin a call on your desk phone and then transfer it to the Bria VoIP app and continue it on your cell phone.
- Use your contact list to make calls, right from inside the app.
- Switch between simultaneous calls, or join all the calls together for an on-the-road phone conference.
- Use your cell phone over a Wi-Fi network
- that means your calls won’t cost any extra and you can use your phone from a WiFi network, anywhere in the world without having to pay expensive roaming charges!!
Voice quality
After testing out the Bria VoIP App on my iPhone 4s, I have to say I am quite impressed with the voice clarity. What’s amazing about this application is that it can use different levels of audio quality — depending on the amount of data bandwidth available and your preferences. For example, if you’re using the Bria VoIP App on your cellular data network, you want the application to minimize your data usage (you can also tell the application only to use WiFi if you never want it to use cellular data). On the other hand, if you’re on your own, fast, WiFi network, then the Bria VoIP App can try to take advantage of that by using a higher quality audio setting. You can specify which “codecs” you want the Bria VoIP App to utilize, and under which conditions it should do so. In the future, we will have a blog article which discusses codecs. In my experience with the Bria VoIP App, the audio in each call has been quite clear and the HD-Audio is simply amazing! I think that the HD-Audio almost makes it seem like the other person is right in the same room with you. Ultimately, your experience will not only depend on the quality of your WiFi network, but also the quality of your VoIP provider. It’s key to have a reliable VoIP provider with the resources to handle the demands of your telephony needs.
Who Can Get the Bria VoIP App?
The Bria VoIP App is currently available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry cellular phone systems; Windows, Mac and Linux for Desktop computers. You can give your VoIP provider a call to see if they support Bria and how to set it up. Or, if you have one of our systems, give us a call at: (855) Steadfast (783-2332) and we’ll get you started right away!
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