Live Services in South Florida - Very Slow?

[v'ger]

Howdy folks,

Day 2 of using my new Live 2535.

Is it normal for Live traffic to take 10 minutes or more to get the first update?

Thursday was almost instant. Power on the unit, wait a few seconds, and traffic loads.

Today (friday), both in the AM and PM commutes, it took forever to get the first batch of traffic -- by which time I was well underway. Good thing it's an hour's drive either way -- because this thing took 10-15 minutes to get traffic.

Is this an anomaly, or is this what I can expect from Live? First year is free, but if I'm going to pay 60 bones a year for renewals this thing better be quick, behave and be rock-solid reliable.

Yeah, I know. Keep dreamin', right?

Other than the slow Live load, I like it. It sliced and diced Golden Glades Interchange messes both days.

 

[canderson]

Rush hour seems to cause a lot of congestion for both voice and data on the cell sites. There are rumors that AT&T 2G services sometimes get the short end of the stick, and that's what powers HD traffic and other Live services. I assume your a.m. and p.m. starts are during normal rush hour, but in decent cell coverage areas?

 

[v'ger]

Been holding off on a reply, waiting to get some more experience with the unit.

We'll see how it handles tomorrow's commutes.

Over the weekend, it was hit or miss. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Still not 10 minutes. I think the longest I had to wait on the weekend was maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

If by "2G" you mean EDGE, I have a phone with AT&T that can use that technology. I can force it to go EDGE. Next time TomTom Live chokes like this, I'll switch my phone to EDGE and browse around.

I have a feeling its it's more of a login thing than a "no bandwith" thing. If it is a login thing, wouldn't that suggest instead that the issue lies with TomTom? I suppose the satnav has to connect to a TomTom Live server somewhere to authenticate and download the info. I think authentication (login) is where the delay is.

Once the 1st traffic report is in the unit, there's no further problems -- no timeouts, errors or anything else.

This "feeling" is based on that I use EDGE quite a bit when making long calls, because EDGE doesn't chew up my battery nearly as fast as 3G does -- and I've yet to have a dropped call on EDGE, no matter what time of the day I use it. Just sayin'...

 

[mvl]

EDGE is a newer technology than what Tomtom uses. EDGE is often considered 2.5G.

Tomtom uses GPRS, a 2G and slower technology.