Uk Alexa voice calling

Anyone else have this now functioning in the Uk, i am using an S7 and although the Alexa app is not yet updated to voice calling if you sign into Amazon.com and change your location to USA and sign into your echo your Echo app will have working voice calling, enabled my dot and father inlaws echo and its working great, really wish Amazon would release the proper Uk update as it is a ball ache having to jump through hoops but non the less with a little patience it is now actually working in the Uk

I would guess it’s coming to the UK at the end of October when the Echo show is released. It was mistakenly released to the Uk Alexa app but not enabled on the devices a few months ago (as in you could change settings of who could call you etc).

I wouldn’t suggest changing your device location just for calling, unless it’s a seriously needed feature. Mainly because it breaks lots of other things at the same time - like news, weather etc

http://rawapk.com/amazon-alexa-apk-download/

This version just enabled it for me

It actually breaks nothing, only change location on Amazon.com, in the Echo app everything stays as is, your location, time zone, news briefing all work perfectly fine

At a guess the app version is the US version and it definately needs work, you can/cant call anyone in your address book from your phones contacts but only the people with Alexa devices get the call, Alexa tries to ring any contact but if it fails to find an Alexa it will not connect. This is a bit disconcerning when you ask it to call someone and it suggests the wrong person… NO NO do NOT call that number, trial and error has shown luckily calls dont go through
The echo app shows who you can call but it will still try to call numbers not shown in the app, if your relatively tech savy this is not an issue but to joe blogs who is not tech savy it will definately cause confusion

Yeah seen the apk would do it but unless you know exactly what to do and from a trusted source it can be the raod to much heartache, thats why i went down the change location route, at least that way its safe

i been trying to figure out if the Echo connect is used early next year do we really need to keep line rentals going ?? i cant remember what Skys rules are, i am pretty sure you can have Internet without line rental but i stand to be corrected on that and also will the connect give you an Azazon echo phone number ?? if it allows outgoing calls to any number then stands to reason it will allow recieving calls in which case it will need a number

I would be more than happy to have to NOT give Sky any money for line rental and if the net goes down and you loose voip then we still have mobiles… will be a bit wierd not having a landline but i guess it is just an old habbit

No idea if Virgin are around here Rob, they probably are its not as if we live in the back of beyond

210 sounds like FTH not FTC, we have FTC and then about 100yds of copper, 26 down 4 up which at the moment is ok for what we need, more is always better but as i started with a modem back in the day sounding like a fax machine and have been through all sorts of early providers, Freeserve, Pipex and god knows who else we find Skys FTC here is rock solid, i will take that speed with solid for now and will keep in mind Virgin

Virgin use some hacked together technology which they call “Fiber” which is actually just coax copper. Their infrastructure is FTC with copper “last mile”. They claim it’s DOCSIS3 (which I personally don’t have too much knowledge of)

Very very very few people have true FTH, I work with some of the big MPLS lines on Virgin with Work (I Work for some larger companies with big IT setups) and even some of them are still FTC.

In terms of speed and providers, there are only two main players, BT and Virgin Media.

Sky, Tesco, TalkTalk, Plusnet etc are all Just BT with their own call centre, Uswitch has info on it: https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/guides/broadband_suppliers/ although a little basic

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Virgin has spent a lot of money on delivering fibre to the street cabinet in recent years and continues to do so.

Sky and Talk Talk are very much independents - they aren’t BT with their own call centres. Both providers use BT and Virgin Media extensively (as well as other providers) to backhaul from the BT exchanges to their local POP sites. Not sure what the figures are like now but there was a time when both TT and Sky favoured Virgin as a way of escaping the BT tentacles.

For the record i am lucky enough to have fibre into my living room in Spain. So much easier to get than in the UK. It is however only 30meg which makes my 150 cable connection in the UK seem super speedy.

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It landed today for me, i now have call feature, drop in and messaging active on my Alexa app, tried the drop in and works great, if you haven’t got it try going into your apps in google store and see if Alexa App update is available

We went LLU back in the day to try and get better speeds, then as soon as Sky fiber arrived and before it was even advertised mainstream we jumped on it and held our breath, up to the intro of fiber Skys BB was known to be appaling so going to Sky fiber was a leap of faith but we had no choice, my kids were always complaining about the other Youtubing and killing the speed, nowadays that hasstle has long since gone as Sky fiber did turn out to be very good and reliable, infact we still use the original modem and router which later became just a single device

Yup updated mine as well even though it was working fine, not sure what the difference was/is between the change location version i was running to the official Uk version, i suspect nothing really

https://love4apk.com/alexa-app/ Its released for windows 10 too!

Side related but just to correct a little above. If your in a superfast area with virgin then it’ll be fiber to the house, specifically you’ll have had in the last year the street dug up and little black virgin trap doors popped in the path infront of your property.

When you then order a virgin connection that utilizes this cable, a local communications company on behalf of virgin will come out and run further fiber from this box to the building face and at that point it gets terminated into a copper coax .

Virgin media engineers are not setup to handle fiber, they lack the tools and in most cases the training to fit it, this way they only have to worry about running from the virgin box on the outside of the building to wherever you want your boxes.

Result? 450mbs down 50mbs up no line rental, landline il never use, and virgin TV.

As far as I am aware, and Ive dealt with Virgin for years, the HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coax) network they use is always fibre to the local street cab. Then coax from the street cab into your house. It would be a bit pointless running fibre to node and then to the building edge only to convert it to coax at that point. The coax can already handle well over 450meg.

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This depends on how/ when your cable was ran. As I mentioned, my street had superfast installed this may, the only reason I don’t have fiber running to the internal switch is the third party installers who do the fiber connection for virgin wouldn’t run it inside. On the wall of the building however is a fiber transition into a coax which is then ran in the walls

Thank you for sharing your information :slight_smile:

Dermacol