?WTF IS AMAZON SIDEWALK?

Er, don’t they mean pavement?

Normally we’d agree… but as Amazon’s misdemeanours go, using an Americanism is fairly minor – especially considering it’s a US company and the feature in question is currently only available to American users. Sidewalk is a new wireless tech that could turn a street full of separate smart homes into a more unified smart neighbourhood – and if you’ve bought yourself a new spherical Echo or 10in Echo Show, you’ve already got what you need to make the most of it.

OK, but what does it actually do?

It’s designed to fill in the gap between your Wi-fi and a cellular network like 4G. It uses a fairly old-fashioned chunk of the radio spectrum, which has been reserved in the past for walkie-talkies and pagers, to share a tiny portion of your internet connection with other kit up to half a mile away. The idea isn’t to replace Wi-fi but to provide a signal to stuff that’s a long way from the router, such as security cameras and other IOT sensors – or things that sometimes stray out of its reach, like Tile’s tracking tags, which until now have had to rely on Bluetooth.

What if I don’t want to share?

Then you need to learn to be less selfish. Besides, Sidewalk can only send 80Kbps and the total bandwidth is capped at 500MB a month – we’re not streaming 4K films here. You can also turn it off completely if you’re determined to be stingy. If you do want to use Sidewalk’s 900MHZ network, though, you’ll need to wait. Tile has some compatible trackers in the pipeline and Ring’s not-yet-available Car Alarm and Fetch pet tag will also use it… but of course, they’ll still need Amazon to flick the big Sidewalk switch for the UK first.