You Can Now Use Your Amazon Echo Speakers As an Intercom System

Amazon is bringing one of Google Home’s popular features to its Echo speakers. The company is introducing a new feature, dubbed Alexa Announcements, that enables users to communicate between multiple Echo speakers within their house. A similar featured launched for the Google Home late last year.

Using the Echo’s new Alexa Announcements feature, you can effectively announce things across all your Echo devices in your house. For instance, you can tell Alexa to “announce that lunch is ready” and Alexa will repeat that in all the Echo speakers that you have set up in your house. You can also have your voice broadcasted to all your Echo speakers in your house, instead of having Alexa announce things on your behalf. For example, you can say “Alexa, broadcast..” and it will start streaming your voice across all speakers in your house.

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Amazon is releasing the new Announcements features to Echo users in the United States and Canda today, support for more regions will likely follow.

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  • mattspeterson

    05 April, 2018 - 6:15 pm

    <p>Echo already had a feature that more closely resembled an intercom — the "drop in" feature (which we use all the time in our house). I guess Announcements are useful if you don't need or want two-way communication…or want to broadcast to multiple locations at once.</p>

  • mclark2112

    Premium Member
    05 April, 2018 - 7:24 pm

    <p>Been around for months. What is new?</p>

    • SvenJ

      05 April, 2018 - 9:38 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#260072"><em>In reply to mclark2112:</em></a> I don't think so. We have had drop-in which starts a point to point from one Echo to another (unless it's a Tap darn it). I don't think we have had this all house thing. Seems useful. I could just broadcast, Hey, call me in the kitchen, and the wife could initiate a drop-in from wherever she is. Not enough people in the house for Hey, everyone come for dinner ;)</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • Bob Shutts

    05 April, 2018 - 10:08 pm

    <p>God, the HomePod is so limited compared to the competition. C’mon Apple, let’s see some courage and make HomePod more useable. Being able to have it double as a TV speaker would be a good start. </p>

  • hack-o-holic

    06 April, 2018 - 11:42 am

    <p>This article is Titled, written and the feature is described all wrong. Amazon already has a much more useful feature called Drop-in that IS a two-way intercom system. Google copied with the much lamer "Broadcast" feature and now Amazon is adding the same feature Google has to the Amazon. This new feature is NOT an intercom. It was NOT created first by Google and you ALREADY can use Alexa as a true Intercom!</p>

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