Avis is expected to offer in-car Wi-Fi hot spot by March

Reported in the International Herald Tribune, Autonet Mobile plans to start shipping the Mobile In-Car-Router for the US in Spring 2007. The wireless router, which essentially turns your vehicle into a Wi-Fi hotspot doling out 400 Kbps to 1 Mbps bandwidth, is specifically engineered to prevent network drops while your car is in transit. On January 2, 2006 Autonet Mobile and Avis announced that Avis would adopt the Autonet mobile hotspot in its fleet, available to customers for an additional fee.

Autonet chose Wi-Fi to incorporate the plethora of devices that connect by Wi-Fi, naming laptops, media players, cameras, phones, and even video game consoles. Clearly this surfing, streaming, and gaming experience is not intended for the driver while in motion. We hope.

Today even my GSM phone still finds deadspots in the greater metropolitan area in which I live. Autonet addresses the concern about dropped connections two ways: using a nearly-ubiquitous 3G networks in North America, and TRU Technology (patent pending). Autonet claims that their unit is designed to work on 95 percent of U.S. roads. I assume similar claims can be made by the numerous broadband PC cards available to wireless network subscribers. Autonet's secret sauce is staying connected while in motion which uses a patent-pending technology which is evidently based on how the Space Shuttle manages its data network connection to the ground.

The proof will be in the doing, and Avis customers will be able to kick the tires on the In-Car-Router for $10,95 per day, starting in March 2007. For individuals, the Autonet mobile unit is priced at $399, and the monthly service charge at $49.

Q: If your In-Car-Router is plugged into your vehicle's 12VDC power outlet, how many more outlets do you have to spare for the devices actually connecting to the In-Car-Router?

Photo source: Autonet Mobile, Inc.