Somehow I missed this piece in the Washington Post when it ran the first time around, but on 12 December this piece ran about RaySat, a Tysons Corner-based company which offers satellite backhaul for in-car Wi-Fi services. A piece is also running on the Wall Street Journal this morning, but people have to pay for that, so the link to the Post piece will hopefully suffice for the moment.
I’m not sure I would want to mar my sexy Acura with some big receiver mounted on the roof, but the ability to get broadband access from anywhere while in the car would be some serious goodness, particularly on long-distance drives. Just don’t surf the net while you’re driving! Speech synthesis of RSS feeds and podcast downloads to the car stereo would be sweeeeeet, though. I would suspect part of the key to sat-based services like this or DirecTV to your car is going to be to make the antennae smaller and less obvious. Also, in-car components need to become somewhat more flexible to accommodate new input and media devices. This consumer electronics segments could stand to become a bit more like a computer allowing easy integration of peripherals components.
Finally, can I just kvetch for a moment about these kids today and all the luxuries they have on the long family road trips? Back in my day you were lucky if you had a walkman to drown out the sound of your parents and siblings.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to walk to work… uphill, and in the snow.
