Buick embraces March Madness with free Wi-Fi, new streaming app
You won't be able to *watch* the games from your infotainment system, but listening is a pretty good middle ground.
Buick has been a partner of the NCAA for a long time, which means benefits for its drivers when the NCAA's annual college basketball tournament kicks off.
Buick has two new perks for vehicle owners going into this year's March Madness festivities. First, it will offer up a free month of its AT&T-provided embedded 4G LTE data. All one has to do is head to Buick's site and enter both an email address and a vehicle identification number (VIN) between March 12 and March 16. The free month of LTE will cover college basketball fans through both the men's and women's championship games in early April.
Sure, you could slap your phone in a cradle and watch NCAA video streams while driving, but that would make you a real piece of crap.
There's a catch, though -- owners must be US-based and have a car capable of receiving 4G LTE data but currently lack an active data plan. If you already have a data plan, it appears you're out of luck (although, to be fair, you were going to pay for this month anyway if you haven't already).
In addition to the free data, Buick has rolled out a new app for all eligible owners. If your Buick has the new Shop app store, it can download a special NCAA Tournament app that will only exist for the length of the tourney. It'll let owners listen to live audio feeds from the various games playing throughout the month -- sorry, folks, but visuals are too distracting.
General Motors has been embedding 4G LTE antennae in its vehicles for years now. For $20 per month, users get unlimited data -- although, after 22GB of data in a single bill cycle, AT&T might throttle your connection during peak network congestion. Prior to adding unlimited data in 2017, $20 per month would only get you 4GB of data, which if you ask any 12-year-old is nowhere near enough.
(Full disclosure: CBS, Roadshow's parent company, pretty much runs the whole March Madness shindig, but it was not involved in the creation of this article. I barely tell my direct superior what I'm doing.)
