Sonos One: Alexa in Belgium


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Hi, what's the reason why Alexa isn't working in Belgium? I'm ok with using Alexa in English until there's support for Dutch. I would say the limitation is the language setting, not the country/location. Just enable Alexa for English in Belgium and I'll settle with that until Dutch is supported. I can read there's a workaround by actually registering the products in UK/US ... so this is kind of pushing people to register products in the wrong way to have features enabled. Can't follow the logic in this.

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@Edward R - Do you have a timeline for Alexa voice control to Sonos in Belgium yet? It's coming up to Christmas and I would like to purhcase more Sonos products 🙂
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there is no technical reason why alexa wont work with sonos. but it keeps blocking me from installing the sonos skill in my alexa device. region locked. you should not lock out regions just because of some false reason. like language. most of belgians speak very good english. there is no good reason that its not available. echo's and echo dots, even my DIY alexa app works like a charm in Belgium. but its frustrating not being able to link the skill to our alexa devices to work with sonos. and on top of that its even more ridiculous to stop the alexa function from working in the sonos one an beam ( which I was considering of buying, but having second thoughts now)
Hi Guys,

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 😞
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Hi unbelievable !!!! Alexa not available in the Sonos product for Belgium !!!! And Google assistant as mentioned in the product specification !!!! Waiting for Sonos team reply !!!!
Hi guys,

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.

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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?

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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.
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That s the point i don t want to buy another device 😃
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There are backdoors. Use a British adress in the account at Sonos.com, UK in timesettings in the sonosapp and UK in the Alexa-app. Works here in sweden..:D
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?


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.

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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.

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@edward R

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.

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
Not sure. I would try submitting a diagnostic after this occurs, then posting the reference number here for Sonos to look at.

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.

@Edward R 

and waiting...
and Google Assistant? does this work in SONOS for Belgium? Google Assistant talks Dutch ...
As far as I know, Sonos can only bring support for a voice assistant to countries where the assistant is natively supported by the parent company, meaning it speaks the official language of that country

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.
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And I am still waiting for the Alexa Skill for Apple Music to be enabled in Belgium as well. Does anyone succeeded to get this working? I know it is already possible in the US. Is it maybe only working for Apple Music Subscriptions in the US? And when will this be enabled for Belgian customers. I have chosen Sonos over Bose mainly for the better support of streaming services. But I think that you are building up a very bad reputation on the voice controlled possibilities of the Sonos One. Sound quality is great and the AirPlay 2 feature has been improved with the Sonos System Update 9.3. Fingers crossed to get more voice recognition features enabled here in Belgium. Don’t mind that it is only available in English.
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These are the error messages when you try to add the Apple Music skill in the Alexa App which is configured for the Sonos One.
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oops found the API 🙂 working on a alexa skill as we speak without the geo limitation
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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?


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.