Ipod Touch with strange Wi Fi network on the interstate

Question

Driving from Florida to Georgia this weekend I noticed in the top left corner of my Touch I had 3 blue bars. Since the Touch is not tethered and obviously is not an iPhone I was curious. So I went into settings and under the WiFi setting the network listed was "Setup". The blue bars continued for almost 100 miles before I finally stopped trying to figure it out and quit looking at them.
I wasn't sure if this was some type of new network the Touch with OS 4.0 tries to find on our phone or what it was. I did turn off the bluetooth on the touch to see if maybe that was it but the blue bars remained.
Has anyone else had this strange phantom network show up? Especially while driving over long distances in a car on an interstate.

Answer 1

No internet likely means connected to router but the router either has no internet or has MAC address filtering enabled. That's a complete stumper to me, as to why you'd be having that for such a distance with nothing in your car. I could imagine a new car might have some kind of WiFi capability in the GPS system or in a multimedia car stereo.. But you'd know if you had something like that I assume.. So then there is the idea of a device someone had in your car that broadcasts an adhoc network, maybe a 3G phone with tethering, but again you'd assumedly be aware of that. You obviously aren't next to the same vehicle for a hundred or more miles of highway, and you'd have certainly noticed that as well. So all I can imagine is that the Department of Transportation is setting up a highway WiFi network for some reason, perhaps for Highway Patrol or emergency purposest. Of course that's wild speculation, but this is a pretty wild story! It certainly is an awfully curious mystery.
I was going to post at this point but decided to do a Google search first. There are a number of interesting articles if you search for "highway wifi". There indeed are apparently stretches of highways as well as rest stops being outfitted with WiFi. Also, new cars and navigation systems are including self-generating WiFi hotspots, as well as networks converting 3G-to-802.11 signals along highways. I'm not sure if this is being done in the new cars or at the tower level. You'll see all the results at Google.