WiFi in Your Rental Car

Jezebel writes "Avis is bundling a 3G-to-802.11 bridge with their rental cars that will turn the vehicles into WiFi hotspots. Will we now have to worry about laptop use on the Interstate?" From the article "Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz told the International Herald Tribune that the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country, including all major US cities. Pratz claims to have minimized the problem of dropped signals with a technology similar to that used by the space shuttles to maintain an Internet connection."

Comments

Regulation

[denebian devil]

Well, many states have taken to banning cell phone use in cars by drivers, or at the very least cell phone use that isn't "hands-free." It's possible they could do the same thing with computers/internet use. Though considering how long it took for those laws to catch up to the reality of cell phone use on the road (assuming you believe they even have caught up yet), I have to wonder how many accidents will happen before such laws manage to get on the books.

Re:Regulation

[Silver Sloth]

I don't know about the US, and IANAL, but here in the UK there's the offense of 'Driving without due care and attention'. Whilst driving while using a laptop is not specifically illegal the courts would use 'due care and attention' in the same way that they would for those caught reading whilst driving - or in on recent famous case, applying make-up

Re:Regulation

[Kadin2048]

here in the UK there's the offense of 'Driving without due care and attention'.

We have laws like that (in most places) here in the U.S. as well, but enforcing existing laws doesn't let the politicians demonstrate how freaking "in-touch" and "useful" they are. Thus, we get nonsense legislation every few years. Solving problems that don't really exist or that ought to be covered by existing laws already is a favorite.

Can they really achieve the coverage

[Silver Sloth]

From TFA

the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country, The last time I looked vast tracts of the USA was wide open spaces with vast amounts of not very much. I realise this will be irrelevant to 99% of the Avis customers but will it realy work in the middle of North Dacota? the Arizona Desert? Yellowstone? (Ok, maybe Yellowstone, but you get my point.)

Re:Can they really achieve the coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a matter of time before 3G follows the same distribution pattern laid out by the original analog cell network, later followed by the switch to digital. I grew up in "fly over" country, so maybe I just had a better opportunity to observe it. But I suspect each successive wave of new wireless technology will follow the same basic pattern.

Coverage first starts out in the major metro areas and works its way out to the suburbs of the largest cities, and especially those that are "centers of commerce." Places like NYC, Chicago, L.A., the bay area, Atlanta, DC, etc. The first market is buisiness users.

Once the business core is ramped up then you start to see coverage in "secondary" cities. These cities have a handful of company HQs and are "destination" cities for business travellers. Cities like Cleveland, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, etc. This trend works its way down the "food chain" of cites to then cover state capitols and university towns like Little Rock, Lincoln, Ann Arbor, etc.

Eventually there is coverage in Omaha and in Fargo and they "connect the dots" by building out coverage along I-29. So in the middle of the country you end up with coverage in the major population areas and on the main routes that connect them. There's good money in leasing a small chunk of your cornfield so they can build a cell tower on it, and most of the major routes in the midwest have digital coverage.

So I don't think it is too much of a reach for Avis, since eventually there is going to be coverage along most of the major roads.

Using a Wifi device in a car

[MosesJones]

There are several things here to consider.

Firstly Wifi != Laptop, this could enable things like Google Earth sat images to be downloaded in real time to your Sat/Nav system, it could be used to switch your mobile to VOIP rather than using a cell, it could be used by the cars Radio/CD/iPod player to offer you new tracks.

Secondly the person driving doesn't have to be the person working. Last year myself and a friend drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas, with a bunch of work to do we split the driving and use a car-charger adapter for the laptop, we got a good 10 hours of work done and an internet connection would have made that a lot better.

Thirdly this also means that Avis can start flogging you added extras that work on Wifi, which is cheaper than 3G connected devices.

My big question though is do all those cars have different SSIDs and will they be WPA and greater protected? If I'm connecting up to a network then I'd prefer people not being able to hijack my devices, some SatNavs can already be bluejacked and this could make it miles worse.

DS Lite!

[metamatic]

Right, and now that every kid with a DS Lite has WiFi in his handheld game system, the kids could be playing Animal Crossing online.

Re:The Killer App

[kkwst2]

Maybe not. Traffic jams are interesting beasts. If traffic can be diverted as soon as the accident happens, then the congestion might be minimal. It would be easier for emergency vehicles to get there and take care of business, and the jam may never materialize to the extent it does now. Most of the time when you get to a traffic jam, the instigating event has long been cleared and you're dealing with the residual mess which can last for hours. If 75% of that traffic could be diverted soon after the incident takes place, then the damage done to traffic patterns could be minimized. Of course, this means you have to deploy the system in almost all the cars on the road, which is a pretty daunting task. Not likely to happen for a couple decades.