If you have Amazon devices as part of your smart home, there's a new service on the block you should be aware of—and as usual, there are both potential benefits and potential privacy implications to think about as you consider whether you want to be a part of it.
The technology in question is Amazon Sidewalk, which Amazon itself bills as "a new way to stay connected." Simply put, it uses Amazon smart-home gear to create a series of mini mesh networks, meaning your devices can stay connected further away from your router, and even stay online when your Wi-Fi goes down.
This is made possible through Bluetooth and unused slices of the wireless spectrum, with Ring cameras and Echo speakers acting as the main bridges (actually called Sidewalk Bridges) to keep everything hooked up. For something to work with the network, it's going to need to be compatible with the Sidewalk standard.
Even if your Ring camera is down at the end of the garden, out of reach of your main router, Sidewalk might be able to reach it through a device that's closer. The network can't carry much data at once, but these smart home gadgets don't necessarily need much bandwidth to stay online.
The potential range of the network is decent—up to half a mile depending on the setup—and Sidewalk is free for Amazon customers to use once they've bought the hardware. As an added bonus, it'll speed up the process of adding new Amazon devices to your smart home, as your e ..
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