It's time to reinvent in-car broadband pricing

[Commentary] Americans spend a lot of time in their cars. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average worker spends more time (~100 hours/year) commuting than they do on vacation (80 hours). And that's not even counting all the time ferrying the kids around, doing errands and (of course) that all-American favorite, the road trip. With so much time spent in the car, it shouldn't be surprising that infotainment systems are increasingly important when consumers choose a car (or outfit an existing car). What should be equally unsurprising is the fact that for the past couple of years, most of the emphasis here has revolved around integration of portable media player/smartphone devices (read that as: iPod/iPhone) into the car, rather than on the built-in "connected" car systems that were getting all of the emphasis a few years ago. And in a pre-App Store, pre-cloud world, integrating devices that could be replaced several times during the car's lifespan (10 years or more for most cars today) certainly made sense when compared to building those features directly into the car. Without a mechanism to easily add and upgrade applications, the car's technology package would be obsolete long before the car itself. I'd go so far to say that the connected car — with built-in broadband — was all but declared dead. And I'd go on to say that such a declaration was definitely premature.