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The vehicle as mobile hotspot (Part 1)
Mobile broadband services introduce enhanced vehicle communications. Rental car agencies, such as AVIS, offer in-car Wi-Fi hotspot services as a premium service in some markets where business travelers can't wait to find a Starbucks coffee shop or a bookstore to stop and check company email
Going to a wireless hotspot for Internet access could become an inconvenient task of the past, if emerging wireless broadband services continue to turn your home, office, and car into personalized mobile hotspots. This message is taking shape through stitching several unrelated broadband services together and envisioning what a seamless world of network connectivity can create.
Rental car agencies, such as AVIS, offer in-car Wi-Fi hotspot services as a premium service in some markets where business travelers can't wait to find a Starbucks coffee shop or a bookstore to stop and check company email. The connectivity is accomplished by installing an EV-DO modem connected to a Wi-Fi router inside the vehicle and powering it off the automobile's battery. For $11 per day, you can have your own wireless cloud follow you in the U.S. cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York (metro area), San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
Millions of connected vehicles provide advantages for both the passengers as well as new services resulting from their mere presence. A member of the IPv6 Forum shared a story suggesting innovative ways to collect and share data suddenly become possible. By assigning an IP address to parts of a vehicle, real-time sensors are now available for aggregated forecasting. For example, if windshield wipers are turned on by several vehicles in a specific area, that signal informs weather forecasters and traffic managers that rain is occurring and approximately how rapidly in a specific area. This is much more accurate than building weather stations across a city to predict future events or relying on expensive weather tracking equipment that looks only at large areas.
In part two of this article, we'll expand beyond the consumer automobile and look at the opportunities for mobile broadband services in the machine-to-machine communications market, along with issues holding back this seamless layer of data networking from reaching its full potential.
By Jeff Orr
ORR Technology, LLC
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