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Dodge (Chrysler) Offers Wifi in Vehicles

November 24, 2008 by debbie T | Wireless

While watching the football game yesterday afternoon, we noticed commercials for Dodge trucks with an option for wifi connectivity.

Hmm, what’s that about?

Googled and found that yes, indeed they added 3G wireless connection using Autonet Mobile to their vehicles.

Here is an older video I found on youtube from Chrysler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc9n9nOJEA0

This made me immediately think about security. Could anyone else connect to the “hotspot” or did it offer password protection, or a firewall, etc. Did some more digging.

It costs $500 for the router (plus install fees) and the plans are $30 per month for 1gb of data transfer and $60 for 5gb. From what I read, it doesn’t appear to be that fast of a connection; you will not be streaming video or playing online games.

They will install the router in any vehicle, doesn’t have to be a Chrysler vehicle.

Oh and about my concerns about security, look at what I found on the FAQ page on Autonet’s web site:

Your Wi-Fi connection is secured with WEP encryption, MAC address restriction or WAN port restriction. Also supports VPN pass-through.

I can’t believe that there are still companies that think WEP and MAC address filtering are security enhancements. Well at least they support VPN. And maybe that is eventually how it’s going to be. Wifi will be open, and we each have our own secure VPN connection. I could live with that!

I sent an email to the sales staff at Autonet to ask if they will be offering WPA security instead of WEP, we’ll see if she answers.

It’s an interesting idea and I am sure eventually we will all have wireless in our cars, but for now, it’s too new (and costly) for me to even think about.

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