Sonos One: Alexa in Belgium
Here we are, January 2019,5 months further since the last feedback from Sonos Staff regarding these developments.
Can someone from Sonos Staff give us some feedback about the Alexa skill for Belgium?
I am getting the feeling of being left in the dark 😞
I live in Belgium and I have been using Alexa since October last year. Just order an Amazon Echo in Germany and use that one to create an account. In that way you can use Alexa on Sonos without any problems in Belgium 😉
Please explain the reason why you are blocking one of the main features of Sonos Beam - compatibility with Alexa.
Hello Edward R - One year on and I have 4 Sonos ones now? Do you have a timeline for Alexa voice control to Sonos in Belgium yet?
Can someone from Sonos Staff give us some feedback about the Alexa skill for Belgium?
My apologies for the delay, somehow we missed this question when it was posted. We're working with the team at Amazon to bring Alexa to new countries on Sonos, but I don't have any specifics at this time for a roadmap regarding Belgium. We'll be sure to let you know as soon as there's any news to share.
Hello Ryan,
We’ve been hearing this for almost a year now. I can understand it takes time to develop but removing the country check should be fairly straightforeward and would help a lot of users in Belgium. It would be a great intermediate step.
Also, just sharing a timeline would help. Not being to provide this suggests this issue is not being looked at or has a really low priority.
As raised by many people, the article is still being sold with the feature enabled.
Legally this is not allowed ...
Just allow the collection between UK Alexa and Belgian addresses. It is just an easy software change. All other arguments just illustrate a lack of respect for your customers.
You have a very loyal customer base. One which is very technology savvy. These “non-technical” reasons cause people to consider other alternatives.
You can’t be a tech player and then end innovation.
Hi, snevel. We're hard at work building up the Alexa Skill for Sonos while adding to it. When Alexa support is enabled in a new location, it takes some dedicated engineering work and testing to bring support to Sonos. We are committed to bringing Alexa voice control to Sonos in Belgium but don't have a timeline that we're ready to share just yet. Stay tuned for more.
This is very frustrating. Please explain the reason why are you limiting one of the main features of Sonos Beam (compatibility with Amazon Alexa) only to selected regions? What kind of “engineering work” is needed to turn it on in all regions? Of course I am not talking about other languages. English is fine.
I’m not sure Sonos is blocking anything. If Alexa is not officially enabled (by Amazon) in Belgium your problem is not with Sonos. As I understand work arounds (as mentioned above) ar available if you are willing to speak english to you Sonos. Another possibility would be installing Google Assistant which is officially available in Belgium I understand.
it would of course be better to opensource the sonos API to controll sonos devices, or at least a subset. so that we can develop our own interfaces, for alexa/google/apple/...
why dont you not check on the locale /location like the spotify skill does. so we can enjoy integration with echo/alexa when these devices become available in any country. so you dont have to do anything. Its not difficult, I have done it myself, even the SDK example ASK can be installed wherever you can get alexa to work.
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/develop-skills-in-multiple-languages.html
Submitting a diagnostic
Please explain the reason why you are blocking one of the main features of Sonos Beam - compatibility with Alexa.
Who is this directed to?
Sonos.
Amazon Alexa is not supported by language in the Benelux, so I would not expect it to work on Sonos either, this is an Amazon decision, not a Sonos decision.
For GA, I would expect that function to be rolled out after the initial US-only period. Be aware that the Dutch language market wasn't a priority for Google either, so it would be naive to expect GA on Sonos to work in Dutch from day one. Here's to hoping we can use some workaround to have the English GA available here.
Can someone from Sonos Staff give us some feedback about the Alexa skill for Belgium?
My apologies for the delay, somehow we missed this question when it was posted. We're working with the team at Amazon to bring Alexa to new countries on Sonos, but I don't have any specifics at this time for a roadmap regarding Belgium. We'll be sure to let you know as soon as there's any news to share.
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