I’m sure there are going to be many more of these shiny bits of marketing in the next week so lets call this one #1 and keep a tally.
Autonet mobile promises to put a WiFi hotspot into your car and connect it to the Internet for $45 per month. Read the webpage. Its:
Everyone AND families too!
we can connect devices ranging from laptop computers to mobile media players like the Fujitsu P1610.
Oooh the GottaBeMobile team won’t like them calling the P1610 a mobile media player. You know what, this Autonet product sounds like a roaming cellular data contract and a WiFi bridge to me. Something that a P1610 can do on its own!
Similar to this product perhaps? The WiFi Cisco/Lynksys hotspot and cellular data modem combo. (info here.)
Or even a 3G-capable phone connected to a ultra mobile PC and then connected to the Internet and shared via WiFi. Something like this guy was talking about over a year ago.
Such a device could be used in the car, turning it into a mobile hotspot
Something many of us know is possible with UMPCs and others are building on smartphones.
I’ll be honest. I don’t really know what’s behind this product of Autonet’s but it sounds suspiciously like what I described above. I mean, lets face it, there’s no other network that has 95% coverage and automatic hand-off other than a cellular network is there? Or has Starbucks really expanded since I was last in the U.S.?
Autonet. If you have managed to negotiate a truly roamable unlimited data contract for $45 its great news and extremely significant for the mobile data market. If you have a hardware product that’s almost a drop-in solution, that’s superb too but tell your marketing people not to get too excited won’t you!
