Seems that'd be easy to confirm, and also seems unlikely to be the reason because of the supposed limits in place.
> Customers can turn Sidewalk on or off at any time from Control Center in the Ring app or Account Settings in the Alexa app
> The maximum bandwidth of a Sidewalk Bridge to the Sidewalk server is 80Kbps, which is about 1/40th of the bandwidth used to stream a typical high definition video. Today, when you share your Bridge’s connection with Sidewalk, total monthly data used by Sidewalk, per account, is capped at 500MB, which is equivalent to streaming about 10 minutes of high definition video.
tinix · 7m ago
> Today, when you share your Bridge’s connection with Sidewalk, total monthly data used by Sidewalk, per account, is capped at 500MB, which is equivalent to streaming about 10 minutes of high definition video.
egorfine · 9m ago
You never use them.
Unlike Amazon.
GJim · 6m ago
"Smart speakers" should be called by their real name: Smart microphones.
Echo --> Amazons microphone.
maxclark · 10m ago
He also has a 25 Gbps Internet connection - not really a huge problem here
diggan · 8m ago
That's really besides the point, unused devices shouldn't upload/download GB of data per month, it's really simple :)
mrlinx · 25m ago
In 2025, can't believe there's still no open-source alternative to these devices.
verytrivial · 23m ago
They're hardware projections into your living space of a massive system run by Amazon. It's the massive system that open-source will have trouble replicating.
herculity275 · 1m ago
Most people use Echos as voice controlled music players with occasional smart assistant functionality, this shouldn't be too hard to replicate in OSS. You could argue that the extend to which they're not making you buy into the Amazon ecosystem is a major failure of the product line.
mrlinx · 20m ago
Spotify multi-speaker playing + a LLM answering questions would cover what 80% of people need.
lupusreal · 9m ago
If echoes had an LLM behind them, they might actually be useful as more than voice controlled egg timers..
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk
> Customers can turn Sidewalk on or off at any time from Control Center in the Ring app or Account Settings in the Alexa app
> The maximum bandwidth of a Sidewalk Bridge to the Sidewalk server is 80Kbps, which is about 1/40th of the bandwidth used to stream a typical high definition video. Today, when you share your Bridge’s connection with Sidewalk, total monthly data used by Sidewalk, per account, is capped at 500MB, which is equivalent to streaming about 10 minutes of high definition video.
Unlike Amazon.
Echo --> Amazons microphone.
1. https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/