GM Sees a Market For $5/Day Dedicated In-Car Internet

An anonymous reader writes "$5 doesn't sound like much for a day of internet service in some contexts: it's less than you might pay for it in-flight, and less than a few espresso drinks if you're lured in by a coffee shop's Wi-Fi service. But not all internet service is created equal; would you pay $5 for a month of in-car internet service if it meant a 200-meg cap, which is (only) 'enough to stream more than 6.5 hours of music?' That's where a new dedicated Internet service from GM starts (also at the WSJ, paywalled), and it's $10 for drivers who aren't also OnStar subscribers. Probably a more likely option for the occasional road trip, though, is $5 per day service (no OnStar requirement) for 250MB of data. Why wouldn't someone just use a smartphone with a data plan, or a dedicated hotspot device? GM thinks they'll be drawn to 'a powerful antenna that's stronger than that of a smartphone, along with a Wi-Fi hotspot that operates without draining a mobile device's battery. That hotspot is on any time the car is on.'"

Re:32GB is useless because of DRM

[steveg]

Are there still cars with built in storage?

Ford included a whopping 10GB hard disk in their fanciest tech package 5 years ago. You can't get that now. Instead you get a USB port in the center console.

I've got a 64G low profile thumb drive plugged in with most of my music collection. Standard MP3s, no DRM issues. There are *other* issues -- the system has only so many slots to hold metadata, so if I add too many songs it will freak out and re-index the USB each time I start the car. But as long as I don't exceed some limit it behaves just fine.

For my purposes anyway, no storage and USB is far superior to built-in storage.

$5 Day or Month?

[Adam Voss]

The summary mentions both $5 a month and $5 month.

Glancing at the linked article, it sounds like you can subscribe for as little as $5 a month and get 200 MB for the month. As a non-subscription you can pay $5 for 250 MB for 1 day.

In both cases there are more expensive tiers offering more data.

Re:"GM thinks" there's your problem.

[Albanach]

I'm not the OP, but I use this booster [amazon.com] in the car. I use the larger antenna and get a huge signal boost. I get 3G where I'd normally only have edge, and a signal in areas where my phone normally reports no signal at all. The booster uses a USB connector to charge, so I have a $10 two port USB charger in the car that supplies power to both the booster and my phone.

The booster only works while the phone is in the cradle, so calls need to be by speaker or bluetooth.

Re:"GM thinks" there's your problem.

[bobjr94]

No different than the cars that come with xm radio, after the free 3-6 months almost no one continues and pays for a subscription. Many people don't even know about the free trial when they buy their car. My wife's new Subaru supports bluetooth audio, wired ipod/Iphones, usb drives and hd radio. So do many mid-range and up aftermarket radios. You can play internet stations though bluetooth on your phone to the car for no extra charge and what ever songs are in your device's storage. They even shows the audio track tags on the display when on bluetooth or usb.