By Default, Amazon's Sidewalk Network is On. Here's How to Turn It Off | Inc.com

Last week, Amazon said it would turn on Sidewalk, its mesh network that uses Bluetooth and 900MHz radio signals to communicate between devices, on June 8. I imagine that most people, even those who bought an Echo smart speaker in the past few years, have no idea what Sidewalk is.

I suspect most of those people would be even more surprised to know that it's turned on by default on every one of their devices. I'll get to that part in just a minute.

First, let's talk about Sidewalk. The idea behind is actually really smart--make it possible for smart home devices to serve as a sort of bridge between your WiFi connection and one another. That way, if your Ring doorbell, for example, isn't located close to your WiFi router, but it happens to near an Echo Dot, it can use Sidewalk to stay connected.

The same is true if your internet connection is down. Your smart devices can connect to other smart devices, even if they aren't in your home. The big news on this front is that Tile is joining the Sidewalk network on June 14. That means that if you lose a Tile tracker, it can connect to any of the millions of Echo or Ring devices in your neighborhood and send its location back to you.

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