Spectrum of Greed

The future of mobile internet - sucks!

But does it have a Hemi? On the 2009 Dodge Ram, a new feature amongst the other high tech bells and whistles is now available.  A wireless internet access point called Autonet, by Mopar, will allow you to wander up to 100 feet from your trusty pickup and attain speeds of 400-800k!  This will allow one person to watch YouTube video that looks like a flip book silent movie, and two or more people trying to use their laptops will need to go into Dunkin’ Donuts to get breakfast while their internet pages load.  It does looks pretty cool though.  Has that matte black techie appearance.

For those of you that are numbers challenged, 400-800k is about 1/5th or less of a normal broadband connection.  I have 6,000k download speed, and 1,000k upload speed on my home connection, and many people have faster connections than I do.  I am not bragging, just providing some perspective.  I would prefer to have 100,000k (100Mb) download, which many other countries have today, but not us.  The slick sales information on the site doesn’t mention what cellular dealer they have made this arrangement with, however based on the speed they are guaranteeing, I am guessing that it is AT&T and their EDGE network.  This would allow the older version of their cellular data card to be used along with their older network, while they prepare their newly acquired regional wireless spectrum for the next generation of higher speed traffic.

This feature is dealer installed, and of course requires a monthly subscription for the internet access.  I didn’t see info on how much the cost was, so if anyone has info on it, please let me know.  And those of you that are scoping out your next vehicle, remember as you have the dealer install this high tech new feature available for the first time on a 2009 Dodge that a service called Ricochet was lit up in 17 metro areas 8 years ago that had similar speeds and cost $40 a month.  Of course, 8 years ago we were not nearly as far behind the rest of the world in the broadband race as we are today, and of course Ricochet no longer exists, as it’s creditors bankrupted it before it had a chance to take off.  Those were the good ole’ days when people called in debts and actually expected people to pay what they owed.  We now live in a new era of high finance and slow internet.