Amazon is starting 2022 with a bang. Today it launched the Amazon sidewalk bridge Pro. The bridge Pro is powered by ring.

The professional-grade bridge is designed to extend the low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless network into public spaces.

The director of Amazon sidewalk says cellular connectivity is too expensive and Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN are limited in coverage.’to help the overall ecosystem, an open network like sidewalk that’s available everywhere was needed,’ says landi.

Amazon is using the bridge in its smart cities research. Air quality monitoring device maker Thingy is deploying it to connect its air quality systems in wilderness areas where firefighters battle wildfires.

‘Amazon sidewalk bridge Pro brings us the power of Lora in a massive number of needed locations,’ said Scott Waller, CEO and co-founder of thingy.’we designed Thingy AQ for very remote locations, where power efficiency and range were critical for fire ground operations,’ he said.

Landi says sidewalk has gained strong residential coverage in over 100 major metropolitan areas since it was turned on in June 2021. There, its primary purpose is extending connectivity for smart home devices.

Sidewalk can extend the low-bandwidth working range of these devices. The smart home steps outside the home, to landscape lighting, outdoor motion sensors, garage door controllers, and pet tracking.

Most echo smart speakers and some ring cameras act as sidewalk bridges. The more of your neighbors with sidewalk bridges, the stronger the network.

The sidewalk bridge Pro is designed to be deployed by businesses and municipalities and used outside. It can pick up any sidewalk signal in the same way your smartphone connects to a cellular tower.

The sidewalk bridge Pro has a range as far as five miles. It requires mains power but has a built-in battery backup.

‘our North Star is to connect billions of third-party devices,’ says landi.’sidewalk’ is a network for developers to build devices on that previously they could n’t make, due to the cost challenges associated with the current connectivity options.