OnStar Upgrade

[ddalder]

I had the OnStar module in my car upgraded this morning.

Non-Canadian customers will likely not have heard about this since the upgrade does not apply to the US. Our cellular providers are in the process of decommissioning 2G CDMA technology and the information provided by OnStar is that this is to occur throughout 2015. As such, the vast majority of OnStar equipped vehicles will no longer work here. SOME 2015's are equipped with 4G LTE hardware and require no modification. As for the rest... well upgrade or do without.

Surprisingly, upgrades are being offered for most or all vehicles originally equipped with OnStar back to the 2000 model year. I definitely did not expect them to go back that far. Granted some modules that work in 2000 model year cars also work in a few vehicles that are 5-6 years newer, but I really didn't even expect they would upgrade 2006-07 vintage cars.

The good news is that the upgrade is generally fairly painless from an ordering and installation perspective. For the Bonneville it cost me a one year subscription to any one of the currently offered plans. OnStar pays for the new hardware and the cost to have a dealership install it.

But, there's always bad new it seems...

OnStar definitely needs to coordinate and disseminate their information a little better. When I ordered the upgrade the OnStar adviser (specific to the 2G CDMA upgrade team) told me it includes 4G LTE WiFi Hotspot capability with 3Gb of complimentary data. Well, it doesn't. In fact, it seems that there are absolutely no new features/options available with this upgrade. They claim it isn't possible to make this work with the older vehicles. The upgrade for the Bonneville is only 3G.

OnStar also changed their option plans citing this required upgrade as one of the key factors (according to another adviser). It is not possible to purchase a "block" of minutes any longer that are good for one year. Instead you must purchase a fixed monthly minute plan for a fee. Minutes are not carried over from one month to the next. I was told minutes could not be carried over after the upgrade which is why they no longer offered these "block" plans.

No new features after two upgrades and increased restrictions on plan options is really making me less interested in maintaining my subscription. OnStar put a group in place responsible specifically for this upgrade. Even when talking to one of these individuals, the adviser frequently had to ask another person to provide an answer.

OVERALL this whole experience has been moderately disappointing.

[J Wikoff]

Some G8 people have been talking about this. It seems some early 09's are gaining Bluetooth out of this.

[ddalder]

Interesting. The new module installed in my car has a Bluetooth symbol suggesting it's capable of supporting it but it doesn't appear to be activated in any way. Even for my 2008 STS, OnStar told me there will be no change in functionality (although there is some limited Bluetooth capability already).