Amazon's CRAZY WiFi project is live 📶

What happened—Amazon’s super ambitious neighborhood network project called Sidewalk goes live today, which will build localized mesh networks to offer WiFi-enabled internet connections out on the streets.

How it works—imagine a residential neighborhood with every house running its own WiFi with an Amazon Echo or some Alexa equipped device connected to it. Amazon will work with these Echo devices to “pool” together your internet connection, combine it with your neighbors’ and create a mesh-network that is capable of offering internet connectivity out on the streets to anyone.

Amazon has ambitiously kept the project “opt-in” by default, meaning unless you tell your Echo you’re out, you’re going to be in. Privacy is a big issue here, with local networks open to new risks of hacking, but team BOZOS promises three-layered encryption that’s impossible to break.

Big picture—with drone deliveries and road side bots being the future of local infra, Amazon is securing itself a networking infrastructure layer that other “delivery” partners as well as last-mile service providers inevitably depend upon, if at all, to fill connectivity gaps. It’s ambitious, and even borderline bat shit crazy!