Cadillac gets in-car hotspot option: General Motors will offer a dealer-installable version of Autonet Mobile's cellular gateway for its CTS line of cars under the Cadillac WiFi by Autonet Mobile label. The $500 device offers Wi-Fi access to a $30-$60/month cellular backhaul (1 GB or 5 GB). Most of the reporting is quoting a $30/month for service, omitting the 1 GB limit.
The new model is a little slicker than what Autonet has previously offered: it's smaller, which is great, but it's designed to dock making it transportable among cars. It's unclear whether there's a proprietary charger or dock in place; if it's truly mobile with an AC adapter, then this becomes a far better deal for a business traveler than Autonet's apparent current family market.
Security might be an issue: Autonet Mobile's FAQ says the device supports only WEP encryption, which no one should be seriously relying on since 2004. I don't suspect a legion of cracker-drivers, scanning for Autonet systems to penetrate, but WEP provides no level of reliable security, and shouldn't have been engineered into any device designed after 2003.
I do question the utility of this for folks other than road warriors, but Autonet Mobile has said (and I have heard through other sources and other articles) that families apparently are so Internet-bound that paying $500 plus $360 or $720 per year for continuous access is a worthwhile household expense.
You would think that in an age where security is an issue, that a company like GM or even Autonet would at the very least support WPA. You don't even need to modify the hardware to do it. Pathetic. Luckily enough for Autonet and Caddies the general public doesn't understand security.