Amazon has never been one to shy away from bringing in new innovative ideas in the market. Recently the company announced the launch of its yet another ambitious project.
Amazon will launch its new Amazon Sidewalk. It’s a networking and location system. The system aim’s at linking smart home devices and other Amazon home products using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which can connect beyond the range of standard wi-fi networks.
The Sidewalk will turn devices like smart floodlights and home assistants into network bridges, passing along security updates and commands form a central Wi-Fi hub.
Sidewalk will be built into Amazons Echo. The company has been planning on adding Ring cameras to this network. This will notify the device owners if the sidewalk is available to use.
Tile has become the first third party to join the project and support the new system
Adding more devices to its Sidewalk will extend its range and functionality. Amazon cites, “When more neighbors participate, the network becomes even stronger”. The network is similar to a Mesh Network will recover the addition of more devices to function at its top capacity.
Amazon claims that “to simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices and help devices stay online and up-to-date even if they are outside the range of home wi-fi”.
The major difference that the Sidewalk network will have over conventional Wi-Fi mesh systems, will be its dependency over location tracking. Amazon had previously demonstrated that Sidewalk which uses Ring Fetch Devices, when clipped to a pet’s collar was successfully able to alert when a pet strays outside of the designated area.
While having such a widespread network using Geo-fencing also leads to various privacy concerns. Amazon has actively laid out a number of privacy features in order to prevent unauthorized users from collecting data. This is done by encrypting the signals that are used to
Amazon has been actively trying to recruit third-party companies to join in on its Sidewalk project. While creating a global network amazon aims in extending the functionality of its Sidewalk in various fields where sharing of data between devices could lead to enhanced performance.
We live in a world that is data-dependent. Having more data naturally means having better performance. However, in this data-oriented world, online privacy and security will always take top priority. The success of Sidewalk largely depends on Amazon’s capacity of handling such a wide Geo-fencing network with security and privacy as its main fore-toe.
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