Wi-Fi on wheels

Now, you can turn your car into a roving Wi-Fi hotspot, thanks to a Santa Rosa engineer whose startup has quickly captured the attention of tech reviewers across the United States.

Autonet Mobile, with offices in Santa Rosa and San Francisco, has designed a wireless Internet router that connects to nearby cell-phone towers and relays an Internet signal throughout the family vehicle.

Backseat students can e-mail, research and submit homework from any Wi-Fi enabled device, such as a laptop.

They can also instant message with friends, log onto social networking sites MySpace or Facebook, or play online video games.

Frontseat passengers can look up directions, check on traffic, or find a restaurant. And if their cell phone is Wi-Fi enabled, they can even make calls without using any minutes.

Drivers, well, they just need to keep their eyes on the road.

The technology has gained positive reviews far and wide -- from online tech source cNet.com to influential Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Mossberg. It also received an editor's choice award from Popular Mechanics earlier this month.

The main criticism of the device is its speed, which averages about 400 kbps to 500 kbps. That's comparable to the slow end of a DSL connection.

Still, all the publicity has delighted Doug Moeller, who designed the mobile router on his kitchen table in Santa Rosa.

"The car is really the one space where most people are completely disconnected," Moeller said. "The press has really been a great validation that we are solving a problem."

Moeller is an old-school car hacker.

In 1997, as a network engineer in Boston, he cracked open the dashboard of his car and inserted a touch-screen LCD and connected a computer.

Long before Apple introduced the iPod, Moeller was bringing his MP3s on the road with him. He even designed his system with wireless connectivity so that when he pulled into his garage it synced the music on his home computer to the one in his car.

Now, 11 years later, he is offering some of that same technology to the masses.

Autonet released its mobile router in 2007 and is designing a slew of programs to run with it. One will automatically import songs and movies stored on a person's home network to his car whenever he pulls into his garage. It's in beta testing now and will be released soon, Moeller said.

"We're really focused on entertainment applications," Moeller said. "And location-based services are going to be a big application."

Each router is equipped with a GPS unit.

The 26-employee company is based in San Francisco and has an office in Santa Rosa, where 10 workers handle customer service and research and development. By late next summer, Moeller expects to have about 30 employees in Santa Rosa, including a host of people working on user interface designs and more customer service reps.

Autonet has struck deals with major players in the automotive industry, including Chrysler, Avis car rental and the auto parts manufacturer Delphi.

Last Friday, Chrysler unveiled a new package for car buyers. The automaker will soon offer a Web edition that includes the Autonet Mobile router and a year's service.

Despite the massive downturn in the auto industry, the market potential is huge for Autonet as car companies look for additional revenue streams. Mercedes-Benz announced last week it was designing a dashboard display that will connect to the Internet -- although it says it is still years from delivery.

Autonet has two advantages in the in-car Internet market, Moeller said. First, the company has multiyear contracts with three cell phone service providers. Its router automatically grabs a signal from the cell tower with the best strength and fastest Internet connection. And with three carriers, it covers 95 percent of U.S. roads, he said.

Second, the network software Moeller designed lets the router seamlessly switch from one tower to the next without breaking the user's Internet connection.

Moeller spent about a year and a half programming the software and designing the router, which is manufactured by another company in Santa Rosa. He moved to Santa Rosa in 1999 to help establish an engineering lab for Advanced TelCom Group. After that collapsed in 2002, Moeller went in search of his next move.

He eventually hooked up with Sterling Pratz, Autonet's chief executive and a former race car driver. Pratz lived in Marin and Moeller in Santa Rosa.

The fact that a former Advanced TelCom Group employee is now leading a startup doesn't surprise Ben Stone, executive director for the Sonoma County Economic Development Board.

"This is the classic trend we see. They want to stay here so badly they go out and come up with new products and services," Stone said.

Emerging startups in the telecom, green, biotech and digital media industries will become part of the lifeblood of Sonoma County.

"That is how Seattle became less dependent on Boeing, because a whole bunch of companies were created by former Boeing engineers who were laid off," Stone said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@

pressdemocrat.com.