Take the internet along for the ride

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: of Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, the signal I received varied significantly, which sometimes made internet access slow down to pedestrian speeds. Furthermore, even though the major carriers claim to be able to reach hundreds of millions of consumers, rural areas with spotty cell coverage receive spotty wireless internet service. An intermittent signal in Vermont, for example, proved too tardy and inconsistent to bother with.

AT&T uses a wireless data standard called HSPA (for High Speed Packet Access), while Verizon and Sprint use EV-DO Rev. A (for Evolution-Data Optimized Revision A). However, faster wireless access is expected next year when Sprint and its partner Clearwire begin to sell a mobile WiMax service called Xohm.

Mobile WiMax is a wireless standard promoted by companies like Intel, Motorola and Samsung, and has been endorsed by the International Telecommunication Union, which means more companies may support it. WiMax promises speeds that would be three to five times as fast as AT&T and Verizon and some cable and DSL services. Sprint expects average download speeds of two to three megabits per second (Mbps), but peak speeds could be 10 Mbps or more when reception is clear.

So Xohm promises to make video calls from the car a snap, as well as eliminating hiccups when watching streaming video from sites like YouTube or listening to streaming music from services like Rhapsody.

Companies supporting the new standard want to not only put WiMax connections in laptop computers and smartphones, but also in Global Positioning System units. WiMax navigation devices could not only get traffic information more quickly for improved accuracy, but also let drivers tap into live traffic Webcams to see what backups really look like.

Sprint and Clearwire expect to introduce Xohm to a handful of cities, including Washington and Chicago, in April next year and hope to reach 100 million potential customers by the end of 2008. Meanwhile, the other cell phone carriers said they were exploring competing high-speed alternatives. AT&T, for example, is planning to someday move to a technology called LTE, or Long-Term Evolution, that could deliver speeds 10 times as fast as WiMax.

But no matter what high-speed wireless technology becomes the next standard, it is questionable whether net access on the highway will be adopted with the same zeal as cell phones.