WiFi in Rentals

January 2007
Rolling Wi_Fi hotspot to be offered in rental cars.
Try connecting to a high_speed wireless network from a car, and you are pretty much limited to one method: rigging your laptop computer with a special modem and subscribing to a costly, and sometimes temperamental, wireless service. But a start_up wireless technology company based in San Francisco is expected to announce this week that it has reached an agreement with a rental car company to provide a rolling Wi_Fi hotspot to customers by March. For $10.95 a day, the rental car company will issue motorists a notebook_size portable device that plugs into a car’s power supply and delivers a high_speed Internet connection. A mobile Wi_Fi hotspot that lets laptops and personal digital assistants link to the Internet without the benefit of wires represents an important step toward what technology experts call the “connected car.” Users of these new Wi_Fi hotspots still must contend with technological limitations, like bandwidth restrictions and, for vehicles with too few auxiliary power outlets for all passengers who want to be online at the same time, battery consumption.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/technology/02avis.html