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by tmiahm 1933 days ago
A network for Amazon devices is certainly one use case. Another is selling network access to other IoT devices.

I would expect most residential broadband TOS would explicitly prevent reselling their network bandwidth/access. That's what you are doing with networks like Helium, even if it is in the form of a token instead of dollars. Amazon has gotten around this by just not paying. You buy the Amazon device, you provide the network access, Amazon gets the revenue.
2 comments
blacksmith_tb 1932 days ago
That makes sense, I had wondered about the crypto angle on Helium. Then again, even if you were relaying a lot of messages from sensors etc. I wouldn't expect it would actually add up to a very big percentage of your total usage (I guess it'd be 24/7, unlike your Netflix/Zoom consumption). So it seems a little implausible your ISP would care (or notice), unless they wanted to get into that business themselves?
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bri3d 1932 days ago
Yes, Amazon already offer a Sidewalk SDK as part of AWS IoT offerings. I didn't even think about the cost angle, which is a really interesting point (although, I think ISPs have an argument against the Amazon devices here still as it's effectively connection sharing, which they also usually ban in ToS). My consideration was just for the customer sales pitch, which is "your IoT devices Just Work magically."
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