"Stephen Shaffer" wrote in message
...
All,

I have a friend that is an advid adventure racer. He is getting ready
to outfit a small RV for a race later this year, and told me that he
is getting XM installed because "they are going to offer a data
channel so you can get Internet Access."

Sounds fishy to me...

Can anyone verify or deny?

I cannot verify nor deny, but I smell the fish as well.

It doesn't seem technically possible. They do not any significant bandwidth
to dedicate to non-broadcast uses. What about 100 "digital" customers who
wanted 56 kilobits at the same time - that's 5.6 megabits per second - about
equal their whole program bandwidth, I suspect.

And XM/Sirius are one-way services. You'd still need to use the phone for
the you-to-them direction.

The rumor is probably based on XM's announcement that they will be sending
digital weather forecasts. But that would be only one low-speed channel.