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Are you checking the cellular bands, or just your local 802.{3,11}? SoC exist with builtin LTE/CDMA/etc.

edit:

Also, voice compresses really well if you don't care about the quality. With a codec that uses <10 kbit/s (e.g. GSM-HR, AMR), the storage requirements are at most 2.4 MB/hour. A simple gate filter that cuts out quiet periods should cut the storage requirements down to only a few MB/week. A typical flash chip used to store the firmware could easily store years worth of typical household speech in the non-firmware space.



> SoC exist with builtin LTE/CDMA/etc.

But inside the Echo? It's not my area of expertise, but I'm almost certain that there are people with the expertise that are looking for exactly that and if Google or Amazon had those built in, we'd know about it. I think we can at least rule that one out.

As for the compression, that is very interesting indeed. I had no idea you could compress voice that much. If / When they're going for 24/7 recording, this would be most likely the way to go and it would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to detect.




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