Cadillac gets in-car hotspot option: General Motors will offer a dealer-installable version of Autonet Mobile's cellular gateway for its CTS line of cars under the Cadillac WiFi by Autonet Mobile label. The $500 device offers Wi-Fi access to a $30-$60/month cellular backhaul (1 GB or 5 GB). Most of the reporting is quoting a $30/month for service, omitting the 1 GB limit.
The new model is a little slicker than what Autonet has previously offered: it's smaller, which is great, but it's designed to dock making it transportable among cars. It's unclear whether there's a proprietary charger or dock in place; if it's truly mobile with an AC adapter, then this becomes a far better deal for a business traveler than Autonet's apparent current family market.
Security might be an issue: Autonet Mobile's FAQ says the device supports only WEP encryption, which no one should be seriously relying on since 2004. I don't suspect a legion of cracker-drivers, scanning for Autonet systems to penetrate, but WEP provides no level of reliable security, and shouldn't have been engineered into any device designed after 2003.
I do question the utility of this for folks other than road warriors, but Autonet Mobile has said (and I have heard through other sources and other articles) that families apparently are so Internet-bound that paying $500 plus $360 or $720 per year for continuous access is a worthwhile household expense.
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