AutoNet mobile. For only $11 a day added to your Avis rental car, get a wireless router that makes your car a personal hotspot, open to sharing and closed for security, and can even be taken into your hotel room, or whatever. Seamless highspeed wifi access for laptops, iPhones, or anything else, speeding down the highway, sitting in a café within 100 feet, or in your bedroom.
From Michael S. Lasky at Wired:
Autonet Mobile: Your Own Personal Hotspot, Everywhere You Go
The device that transforms this humdrum domestic into a shining example of go-anywhere, do-anything internet is the Autonet Mobile Wi-Fi router. Currently available only through Avis for $11 per day, the paperback-sized gadget plugs directly into an AC power adapter. Once a security ID number is punched in, the router blazes to life and delivers encrypted Wi-Fi within a 100-foot radius. Suddenly, actions unheard of in an automobile are possible: surfing the internet, syncing GPS or just looking for directions on an iPhone.
Once behind the wheel of the Pontiac, I plug the Autonet into the cigarette lighter and within seconds (seconds, not minutes) my PC picks up a full Wi-Fi signal. In a blink I’m checking gmail, and not long after that I download directions to my hotel. Then I look at my watch. The entire process, from initial plug-in to receiving route info, is done in under a minute. I can’t match this performance -- even with my iPhone. But the best part? Well, I haven’t even arrived at the best part yet.
The sweetest bonus that the little black box has in store for me occurs when I roll into my hotel. What? Ten bucks a day for internet service? I don’t think so. I head to my room, unpack the router and, using the supplied AC power cord, turn my boudoir into a firewalled hotspot voluptuary.
But how is true mobile Wi-Fi possible? Autonet has made it happen through a unique wireless internet service that interfaces with preexisting 3-G and 2.5-G (EVDO, 1xRTT) cellular data networks that cover 95 percent of the United States. High-speed access ranges from 600 to 800 Kbps while integrated WEP encryption, MAC address restriction and WAN port restriction offers Zen-inducing amounts of security. True, it’s not as fast as a direct cable or DSL connection but the company’s proprietary technology works transparently while a car is in motion, seamlessly stitching together signals from one cell tower to the next.
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