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World's First Internet Car Radio Launched
The prototype of the latest technology was unveiled in the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and is developed by the Melbourne-based online radio aggregator miRoamer.
Now the German based Blaupunkt has inked a deal with the miRoamer and is ready to be integrated in to top car models such as Ford, Holden, Mercedes, BMW and Audi. However it is also available separately, for the others to be able to install it in their cars.
The new technology is all set to threat the positions of traditional terrestrial broadcasters such as Austereo as it offers competition to them from various more radio stations from around the world. The CEO of Doncaster-based miRoamer, George Parthimos, 37 said that the company has collaborated with Internet radio stations from all over the world and brought them together and they can be accessed via miRoamer.com. This can be accessed on car radios and mobile phones.
"Some of them are small garage type stations that might only have five or 10 listeners all the way up to broadcasters which have an audience of up to 5 or 6 million people monthly," The Age quoted him as saying.
He added: "You can listen to anything from traditional terrestrial stations, to internet-only stations, to genre-based stations - jazz, rock, pop, '80s, '70s, comedy, talk, finance. "You're not tied down to the limitations of terrestrial radio. We see this as an evolution of radio."
Internet can be accessed by the Blaupunkt via Bluetooth and on to the driver's mobile phone, that further needs to be attached to a telco's 3G mobile broadband plan. A 2 GB monthly plan is required to power the for a month on the average drive, as claimed by Parthimos.
The users will have to pay for the cost of the mobile broadband plan and radio also, with the radio costing 399 dollars and 15 dollars subscription fee to access the stations. The miRoamer will be launched in US and Europe in the later part of 2009, while Australia will have to wait another year for it to be introduced as a stand-alone product and already built into new cars.
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