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hanlong
Contributor I
January 7, 2018

on expanding geographic restriction for SONOS Alexa skill

  • January 7, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 1067 views
I've been enjoying Sonos for more than a year now, and I've been recommending it to my friends outside US. I especially have friends who love Sonos in Japan and other countries in Asia, but they've been complaining about the facts that they can't enjoy SONOS' Alexa skill, while they are willing to opt for Sonos instead of other smart home devices.

Japanese media are also very much loving Sonos:
https://www.gizmodo.jp/2017/10/sonos-one-launch.html
https://forbesjapan.com/articles/detail/17984
https://robotstart.info/2017/10/05/sonos-one-with-amazon-alexa.html

I know Sonos have long term strategic plan to deploy their product all over the world, but from the zeal I've been feeling from my friends, I kindly advice them to lift the geo restriction for voice recognition service i.e. Alexa asap, so that the rest of the world can know how great it is 🙂
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5 replies

Kumar
January 7, 2018
It isn't a restriction, it is not being able to keep up with Amazon in terms of global server infrastructure that is the problem for Sonos here, is my very strong suspicion.

Does Alexa talk Japanese in Japan? Or is it still English with a Japanese accent as it does Indian accented English in India?
hanlongAuthor
Contributor I
January 7, 2018
@Kumar
well from what I understood through my friends trial to use the Sonos' Alexa "skill", they were not being able to enable the Alexa skill because the language setting of the Alexa device (=Sonos) was not set up to their Amazon Alexa account language(e.g. Chinese, Japanese). But I found out that other skills from other companies can be enabled from Asian countries, so I suspected it was in the app setting from Sonos and/or the fact that Sonos' language settings only offer English and German.

The Japanese Alexa can even sing in Japanese:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNVwzjNqfsQ
Tristan81
Lyricist I
February 10, 2018
still waiting for Alexa skill to be Available in Australia...How hard can it be to release to all English speaking countries at once
dwoods
Lyricist I
August 10, 2018
can we get around it by just setting our region to somewhere in the US?
Toolio
Prodigy II
August 10, 2018
can we get around it by just setting our region to somewhere in the US?
I’ve been using my Dots in Brasil for more than a year, including with Sonos. Some were purchased in the US, some in Canada. I used US settings before they started selling Dots in Canada, then switched to Canadian settings in Brasil. I use a smart dns service to get around geoblocking of a couple of services (notably Slacker Radio). But if you don’t use those, you won’t need it. Everything works fine for me.
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