Amazon wants to expand its 'Sidewalk' home network

Amazon.com Inc. is opening its Sidewalk wireless network to outside developers to determine if it can be applied to commercial purposes beyond Amazon's own devices.

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Amazon's smart home devices and their links to household Wi-Fi routers are the foundation around which Sidewalk is based. Recent models of the company's Echo smart speakers, Ring video doorbells, and outdoor cameras interact with Sidewalk-eligible devices using Bluetooth, long-range radio waves, and other wireless protocols while using a portion of Wi-Fi bandwidth to receive and send signals to Amazon servers.

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Amazon stated that Sidewalk would be constructed in 2019 and that it now serves 90% of the US population. According to Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon's Devices and Services department, "it kind of finds the sweet spot between cellular functionality and Wi-Fi, but travels to a place where Wi-Fi doesn't have the best coverage."

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The Seattle-based company stated that it anticipates a set of Sidewalk products, including a logistics cargo tracker, a smart door lock, and a sensor that can detect water leaks, to hit the market later this year. "I think we'll see something coming down the pipeline in six to twelve months," Limp said if more developers join the project.

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Sidewalk was initially created to bridge the gap when a motion sensor or an internet-connected door lock can't be reached by a home's Wi-Fi network, keeping Amazon's smart home devices online. Yet, the dominant online retailer is confident that other businesses will find a use for a long-range, low-bandwidth network.

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A system like this may be suitable for the many "Internet of Things" devices, such as inventory trackers, motion detectors, and water monitors, which all operate at extremely low power levels. (When Amazon first launched the service, it used the prototype dog collar tracker named Fetch, which hasn't hit the market, to highlight the pitch.)

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According to a coverage map, the business plans to publish on Tuesday, Sidewalk covers large cities and even tiny towns. Rural and thinly inhabited areas, as well as some industrial and agricultural zones adjacent to cities, are typically missed by the network.

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Limp claimed that as more individuals purchased gadgets in recent years, the coverage map expanded. According to Limp, whereas signals emitted from an Echo speaker inside a home - which must beam data via walls - would terminate after a few hundred meters, a floodlight camera positioned on the upper corner of a garage might extend the network by a kilometer.

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He said that the vast majority of users who own Sidewalk-compatible gadgets have chosen to join the network and share some of their home's bandwidth. By encrypting the data transmitted over the network and hiding the fact that users' devices were being used to connect, Amazon aimed to allay privacy worries.

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In order to cover any gaps left by its consumers, the company also deployed bridge devices. Commercial users who need stronger coverage or connectivity in remote areas can get those from Amazon.

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Amazon will provide free network access to developers of Sidewalk-connected products. Amazon is expecting that successful developers will use their paid AWS services to store and manage the data from their devices. It is connected with Amazon Web Services products.

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Sidewalk is comparable to Apple Inc.'s Find My network, which makes use of Bluetooth in iPhones and other gadgets to find misplaced Apple products as well as some other brands' goods.