A Wireless Hotspot For Your Car — Why Not?

nk497 writes "UK mobile operator 3 has unveiled a wireless hotspot for cars. It's essentially a repackaged version of their MiFi wireless router, which lets users create their own wireless hotspot using the 3G network. While drivers will hopefully steer away from using the web at the wheel, 3 predicts the mobile hotspot will let passengers entertain themselves as well as offer a hookup to email, music and traffic data."

Comments

O goody

[DeadDecoy]

Now I can look forward to people driving and twittering and emailing and watching youtube. On second thought, the resulting mayhem might be fun to put on youtube. It has a sort of Escher-esc appeal to you it. Jackass recorded on youtube crashing while watching youtube.

Re:O goody

[EdIII]

Already happened to me... in a way.

Was driving with across the US with a buddy on my laptop with a Verizon Wireless EVDO card. We decided to test it by entering a $150 dollar online poker tournament and we were doing very very well... until the signal went out.

I could have made a u-turn and went back to good signal, but that would have defeated the spirit of the test. So I sped up to about 105 mph. Right when we got back into the tournament (only lost about 10-15 hands) I looked up and noticed the state trooper behind us.

He had been following with his lights on for about 10 minutes.

To add insult to injury, the dipshit next to me went all in with 22's against a bigger stack while I was explaining to the state trooper that I was just tired and concentrating on the road in front of me.

Net Loss: $325

So yeah, there could be some distractions with a 3g/4g network available in the car.

Re:Sign me up

[FooAtWFU]

Which people like to make fun of, but it can be handy to have a desk in your car that you use while parked when you have a few minutes and don't have a coffee shop or something nearby to step into.

Re:Car hotspot?

[AvitarX]

Yeah, because pandora would be useless in a car only occupied by the driver.

This is not marginal, it is good that a non-manufacturer is working on this, as however much they charge, it's gonna be less than GM would for the same thing. Once internet in car becomes available like that, things will start to take advantage of it. Something like a iPad, or an Android device would be great to have instead of a stereo in a car. Just a flat screen 5-9 inches where my disk changer is. I wouldn't even need to look at it while driving to gain immense value.

GPS navigation, Radio, MP3 Player, Traffic alerts, AND passengers would be able to use internet too.

I hope this catches on, because I would line up as a sucker in no time. Though hopefully less than $60/month, as I won't be hitting it that hard (unless an hour or two of radio is what they consider a lot).

Took them long enough..

[kyhwana]

They're a bit late.. Tugrik did this what, almost 10 years ago?
http://www.stompboxnetworks.com/

Re:Took them long enough..

[mweather]

And Autonet has had a commercial product on the market for at least two years. Plus this had been an option on Chryslers since last year.

Re:Car hotspot?

[garcia]

No, we stuff people in wood chippers and call casseroles 'hot dish'. This, this is how the Internet has affected me ;-)

1993 LAN in a car with wireless data service

[billstewart]

The first time I saw a LAN in a car was San Diego Usenix in ?1993?. It was Phil Karn's (KA9Q) car, and it was really just a thinwire Ethernet neatly installed from the front seat to the trunk. Laptops were much bigger then - he had a large clunky 386 machine in the front seat, and the alpha and beta versions of the Qualcomm cellular radios in the trunk. We were able to connect to a cell site at something like 9600 baud, and telnet to the Bell Labs firewall, which happily rejected our attempt to log in as "berferd".

Not new

[Nerdposeur]

I work in the cellular industry, and this isn't new, other than being kinda small like the MiFi. If you wanted WiFi with a cellular backhaul in your car, you could have gotten that from Linksys, Cradlepoint, or JBM (now Sixnet) and others anytime in the last few years that I've been in this industry, probably much longer. If you were content to get an Ethernet connection and add your own WiFi hotspot, the list expands to Airlink, Bluetree, Digi, etc. And that's just off the top of my head.

Of course, geeks will always find a way. A friend of mine in high school created a dash-controllable MP3 stereo system for his car in 1999. He had an entire PC running Linux in the trunk and the display was re-purposed from a home security system. But that's not exactly a consumer-friendly setup.

Re:Car hotspot?

[twisteddk]

Admittedly, having internet access in your car is "nice" on occasion.
However, The article isn't about internet access, but about a mobile hotspot. Essentially connecting a wireless router to a wireless internetconnection (3G, UMTS, sattelite, whatever).

I believe this is the "why" the original poster is asking. Because if you have a wireless internet connection already..... Why would you WANT to turn it into a hotspot ? Exactly how often do you feel the need for attaching 2 or more computers to the internet while driving your car ? I'd wager not very often.

Now for busses, public transportation (we already have that here in Denmark), trams, etc. I can perfectly understand the need. But with majority of carmiles driven being with only a single occupant in the car, even the tought of a personal mobile hotspot seems rediculous.