TomTom Adds 76 Million Traffic Probes in the US

[offthegrid]

There is no way TeleNav and Rim add up to 76 million which makes me wonder if they also are now using T-Mobile.

http://www.twice.com/articletype/ces/tomtom-upgrades-hd-traffic-service/104599

LAS VEGAS – TomTom upgraded its cellular-delivered HD (High Density) Traffic service with improved real-time detection of traffic incidents and more accurate time-of-arrival estimates, thanks to a major expansion of the number of vehicles tracked in real time to 76 million from a year-ago 3 million, the company announced.

The 6.0 version of HD Traffic “is able to report the location and length of traffic jams on highways five times more accurately than the previous version of TomTom HD Traffic,” the company said.

The company secured the additional live “traffic probes” via multiple partnership deals. The publicly announced deals include the recent inclusion of HD Traffic in Telenav navigation apps for iPhone, Android and Windows smartphones and a December 2011 deal with smartphone maker RIM to include HD Traffic service in a travel-time app, said Ralf-Peter Schafer, head of TomTom’s traffic product unit.

Other live traffic probes include cellular-equipped TomTom PNDs, TomTom’s own smartphone apps, fleets, and other sources.

The service, launched in the U.S. in 2011, downloads traffic-update information to smartphones and cellular-equipped PNDs every two minutes and covers millions of miles of roadways

 

[dhn]

Some feeling that AirSage may have become a partner in all of this......

 

[mvl]

Airsage is verizon, right?

The last sub counts I could find are below. Seems like it must be some subset of Verizon or AT&T, maybe GPS-enabled phones (eg: the newer ones)?

AT&T makes sense as the PND LIVE partner. Verizon makes sense as Vodafone's partner.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/grading-top-10-us-carriers-first-quarter-2012

 

[offthegrid]

AirSage is both Verizon and Sprint which between them is maybe 140 million active phones. I would have thought this a natural partnership all along and maybe it is but the numbers don't add up.

Rim and Telenav maybe 30-40 million - that's a guess but Telenav is the underlying service on both AT&T and Sprint navigation apps. I'm figuring a faltering Rim has maybe 12 million users here but Rim users have to opt out not to take part.

Taking TeleNav away from Inrix was a coup for TT traffic.

There is another yet to be announced partnership. My money is on T-Mobile which is gsm like Vodafone and desperate for cash here.

Either way this is HUGE news for TomTom traffic users going from 3 million probes to 76 million in a year. It'll be interesting to see if the traffic data is noticeably better in the near future.

 

[Andy_P]

Either way this is HUGE news for TomTom traffic users going from 3 million probes to 76 million in a year. It'll be interesting to see if the traffic data is noticeably better in the near future.

They might even need to employ a second intern in the Traffic department!

 

[mvl]

I think the 76m went live late last year. I noticed a huge improvement in the November/December timeframe. I haven't seen HD traffic be wrong in any of my driving for the last month.

 

[offthegrid]

As a continuous user MVL you are probably right. I commuted from New Hampshire and Maine to RI for 3 weeks right around Christmas and the data was fantastic.

 

[Alex.F]

Any feedback on 6.0? I can't wait to update mine. THX

 

[dhn]

HD 6.0 has been rolled out in the USA. You should be seeing more incidents, more examples of road closures, more coverage, more precise ETA's, etc.

 

[Andy_P]

Any feedback on 6.0? I can't wait to update mine. THX

AFAIK, you don't update anything at your end.
Any changes for v6 HD Traffic are just done on their servers.

 

[Alex.F]

Thanks dhn & Andy_P. I can't say that I see any difference, but the time will tell. Overall, it's been decent since the end of November 2012.

 

[canderson]

100% correct, Andy. Strictly a function of what the server in the Netherlands is serving up for traffic data. In my experience here, the geographic granularity, time/delay estimates and actual coverage all improved by an order of magnitude when they rolled this out. As I noted to someone elsewhere the other day, I was recently treated to information about a delay on an EXIT RAMP to a minor road where there was no delay on the highway itself since it was a long ramp and the traffic hadn't backed up that far yet. Astounding.

 

[Alex.F]

Found a good article, not sure where to post:
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/How-TomTom-Makes-Maps-Part-3-IQ-Routes.php
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/How-TomTom-Makes-Maps-Part-4-HD-Traffic.php

 

[offthegrid]

TomTom can show traffic on any road segment because they use Open LR. Navteq still segments roads & can only use those predefined segments.


http://www.openlr.org/

100% correct, Andy. Strictly a function of what the server in the Netherlands is serving up for traffic data. In my experience here, the geographic granularity, time/delay estimates and actual coverage all improved by an order of magnitude when they rolled this out. As I noted to someone elsewhere the other day, I was recently treated to information about a delay on an EXIT RAMP to a minor road where there was no delay on the highway itself since it was a long ramp and the traffic hadn't backed up that far yet. Astounding.