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AT&T, Audi Announce In-Car 4G LTE Plans, Starting At $99 For 6 Months
Lucas123 writes "Audi is set to became the first car company to offer native, in-vehicle broadband in its 2015 A3 models through AT&T and it has just listed pricing for the service. Audi and AT&T will offer two data plan options: a 5GB, 6-month plan for $99 and a 30GB, 30-month plan for $499. Audi and GM first announced the upcoming availability of in-car 4G LTE during the CES show this year. GM plans to roll out 4G LTE in vehicles later this year and will eventually have more than 30 models supporting it. Audi said it plans to expand 4G LTE capability across its entire lineup as new or refreshed models come to market."
'Nuff said.
No chance I'd go for this, not in a pig's eye. When will they talk about rolling out reasonably priced plans?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who would pay for a 30 month contract at that price. This is going nowhere.
I have a phone. It has a 4G LTE plan. It is always with me.
I have a tablet. I cannot use it simultaneously with my phone (in the sense that I'm actively doing something that consumes data with one device).
I have a laptop. I cannot use it simultaneously with my tablet and phone.
I have a car. I cannot use it simultaneously with my laptop, tablet, and phone.
Clearly the proper metric that used here is to charge for LTE data use per individual (or even per GB). Not per device. The "correct" solution here is to get your cellular data plan with your phone, and have your phone operate as a hotspot to share that data with your tablet, laptop, and car. Attempts to charge for service on a per-device basis is just double-, triple-, or quadruple-dipping by the carriers. If service is being metered per GB, this shouldn't even be an issue. Pay a nominal fee for an LTE SIM card, link it to your phone account, and add the data it uses to your monthly usage. There is absolutely no need for the device to have its own separate plan.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I am not up to date on US broadband prices but wouldn't it be much cheaper to get a MiFi access point instead? But I guess if I had the money for a new Audi, I wouldn't care about 99$ a month for a overpriced broadband service. If it is all paid up for the price of the car hides the cost of the broadband.
so the small trip to Canada can cost more then the price of a new car very fast.
....but it's the first to offer 4G LTE.
My 2014 Jeep has Uconnect Access which uses Sprint, I believe. It's also too expensive....
Remember 2G? Many cars that predate it are still on the road.
In a couple of years this will be as desirable as mid-90s in-car phones. Meanwhile you will pay higher sticker price.
Unlikely as it may seem, there may be some outfits out there willing to gouge a bit for exceeding plan limitations.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Therefore my additional cost = $0
This cannot be considered the first vehicle with native in-vehicle broadband. In fact, the Tesla Model S has offered this since 2012, or 2013. Furthermore, there is (currently) no charge for this service.
I have a car. I cannot use it simultaneously with my laptop, tablet, and phone.
Ask me how I know you don't drive in the U.S. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For that much data over that period of time, it's cheaper than a MiFi (For Verizon the cheapest plan is $30/month - for which you get 4GB/month, but then you are paying $180/six months).
If you need a lot more data then it wouldn't be such a deal, but a car is going to use a subset of data - maps and music mostly, which should fit into the 1GB/month structure they are going for here.
I was actually thinking to post, why can't I get a plan like that for a tablet...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'd definitely rank that 5 stars.
It is LTE. LTE-Advanced (the real "4G") is supposed to start rolling out this year.
The average vehicle life is 11.4 years. That means this car will have an obsolete wireless connection for nearly 11 years. At the rate that new standards come out and frequencies shuffle, you may not be able to get service at all in the last couple of years.
The iPhone 5S came out - the iPhone 5 was not instantly "obsolete". "deprecated" maybe, but not obsolete.
At least LTE is a subset of LTE-A, so compatibility for LTE should remain as long as LTE-A is in use. Not like integrated analog car phones which became truly USELESS a couple years ago.
Could be useful for listening to internet radio or updating music libraries.
At a 128kb/s stream (I think thing streams are kilobit rather than kilobyte), that's
5,000,000,000 bytes.
40000000000 bits
/ 128kb/s
86 hours (312500 seconds). If that's 5GB/month, it's not too bad for radio... if that's 5GB/6mo it's a bit crappy.
For syncing/downloading music, of course, it depends on the size of your library.
I just can't see why you would need this ? If the car needs an Internet connection to, say, update street maps then just give it your home WiFi password.
The driver should not have much need since he is supposed to have his eyes on the road, I suppose streaming music might be nice - but the radio/cd-player does me fine. Passengers: if they want the net then they just fire up their 'phone/tablet/...
So why ? Or am I incredibly unimaginative ?
I was wondering how we were going to pay for making sure that we are no longer free to move about the country. Now I know!
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Basically what Audi is doing by instituting this plan is announcing to the world that they are building their cars to be obsolete in two years. If Audi was building quality cars they would have announced that they have entered a partnership with AT&T to put an adapter in their car that will be compatible with cellphones on the AT&T network for the next 10 years (or more). As it is, they have indicated that they are building fancy pieces of junk that you won't want two years from now.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Clearly the proper metric that used here is to charge for LTE data use per individual"
AYFKM? Why would anyone, ever, charge you for one pool of data to purchase when they can charge you multiple times? Look, you could pay $50/mo for 2GB, and $10/GB after that, but where's the profit in it? You clearly have the money to purchase a phone, a tablet, a laptop, and a car - what's an extra $20-40/mo per device after you've spent 10-100-1000X that getting the hardware. It seems only "fair" that your internet provider should see a cut on the first byte on each device. Think of the expense and computing power required to keep those devices active on the 'net - $20 per device all of a sudden seems kind of low, doesn't it?
First you take away first device fees, then you want free texting (as if it's just surplus bandwith that is just being thrown away) - who's going to make sure AT&T execs can afford food and clothes for their kids, a new fur for the wife, or a second yacht? You take away per-device pricing and you may as well just sign every telecom executive up for welfare and food stamps. It's like you don't even care.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So I can go "semi-annually" for $16.50/mo, or I can "lock in" a rate of $16.63/mo for 2.5 years. On a service which has been falling in price (i.e. - metered mobile data).
Unless you happen to live in that magical land where you use between 5.2 and 6GB in 6 months, you may as well get the 6 month plan and take your chance on a better plan in the future. Like adding your car to your existing mobile plan for $10 and using your existing data pool.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... you rich tech geeks need to resist this crap. Do not buy these services. I want to see them die before they ever get off the ground. If I ever have to pay a subscription fee to use a car, I swear to god I will drive a 2002 Honda Accord for the rest of my life, and I will love it.
Clearly the proper metric that used here is to charge for LTE data use per individual (or even per GB).
You get free tethering with tmobile's simple choice plan. For a family plan you can get tethering of 1G (recently upgraded from 500MB) data for free for each line, for $22/line (sans fees/taxes). I'm doing exactly that - it's quite good.
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[insert android head unit joke here]
When China started pumping out Android 4.0 (and higher) devices in car stereo form-factors with "standard" cabling and 25-50 watts per channel on the audio output, I started to ponder what sort of service my car needed. These devices all had WiFi, and a few could take an add-on USB cellular device, but nothing that worked for me.
I wanted maps, streaming XM, maybe some Pandora, and the occasional Google Now based search.
It was vastly easier to order a Hotspot device with a no-time per-gig contract from something like FreedomPop -- I just had to wait for good service in my 'hood.
http://www.distraction.gov/content/get-the-facts/facts-and-statistics.html
Already drivers are out of control, not paying attention because of phones or other distractions. We're waving the whole net at them. What could possibly go wrong?
I have a tablet. I cannot use it simultaneously with my phone (in the sense that I'm actively doing something that consumes data with one device).
The tablet's operating system can download updated versions of applications while you are using your phone. Or another member of your family can be using your tablet while you are using your phone.
I have a car. I cannot use it simultaneously with my laptop, tablet, and phone.
You are using a map application on the car's infotainment system, which scrolls after passing through each intersection. Your wife is on the phone with someone at the destination. Your son is in the back seat doing something with the laptop. Your daughter is in the other back seat doing something with the tablet.
How long until it is mandatory to have a data plan for your car to use any of the infotainment features, ie, their is a built-in incompatibility or missing feature to pair your car with whatever mobile data device you already own (phone tethering, MiFi-type device, existing municipal wifi, etc)?
Car maker makes data usage exclusive to one carrier, earns spiff for every subscription, carrier just ups data plan cost to cover spiff.
Total ripoff.
This is genius! When their owners crash their cars from fiddling with data-related bullshit while driving, they'll buy another one. The best planned obsolescence I've ever heard.
I can have a data plan for my smartphone, a data plan for my tablet, a hotspot plan for my laptop, and now a data plan for my car. Grand total ~$180 per month. What crack is AT&T smoking?
No doubt this is in response to Tesla., who has had cell communications in all of their cars for the last couple of years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But I guess if I had the money for a new Audi, I wouldn't care about 99$ a month for a overpriced broadband service.
It's $99 for 6 months which translates to $16.50/month.
I'm curious what happens when you drive into another country. For instance I drive from the US to Canada about once a year. Would I receive some obscene roaming data charges just for driving into another country? I have to turn off my cell phone data in Canada to avoid sticker shock on my next bill. Don't really want to have to do that for my car too.