Jordan O'BrienThose with an Amazon Echo will soon be able to use the device to broadcast messages around the home – perfect for dinner announcements, or getting someone’s attention. That’s because the firm has announced a new intercom function, although there’s bad news for those outside in the UK and Europe.
Debuting in the US and Canada only, the new feature is dubbed Alexa Announcements and allows users to broadcast messages to all the Amazon Echo devices located around their home. This is essentially an upgrade on the existing two-way intercom functionality that has been available for a while, but now allows one-way communication only.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that third-party Alexa-enabled devices will enjoy the same functionality, which is common for some of the Echo’s best features. That means to take advantage of this new intercom feature, users will need to have an array of Amazon-made devices, like the Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Spot, and Echo Look.
To get started with Alexa Announcements users simply need to trigger the function, which can be done using various commands, including ‘Alexa, tell everyone…’, ‘Alexa, announce that…’, or ‘Alexa, broadcast…’. From there, users can broadcast any message they want through an army of Echo speakers, but, as mentioned earlier, only those in the US or Canada will enjoy this functionality for now.