TT & Vodafone offer travel-time info

TomTom and the Dutch arm of telecom company Vodafone are currently joining forces in developing an advanced travel-time system for drivers. Both partners are talking about a revolutionary breakthrough in the way that people will be planning their daily routes. The new system should become operational in the second half of 2007.

The new system uses a technique developed by TomTom: rough data of the GSM network is gathered and transferred into data about traffic speed and density. In this new travel-time system, the necessary data is collected from the Vodafone network. Comparable techniques are already used on a few websites on which drivers can check how busy the traffic is on the route they will take. The TomTom and Vodafone system is the first application of that sort that is meant for commercial use.

Operation

Roughly, this is how the system works: the location of Vodafone subscribers is being determined by measuring the distance between the mobile phone and the nearest cellphone masts. This information is collected by Vodafone, and passed through to TomTom. From this information, TomTom can determine how busy the traffic is on certain roads. With this info, it becomes much easier to pin-point where slowdowns on the roads are currently taking place, and how long it will take to get from point A to B.

Compared to existing systems like RDS-TMC, the new system has a few important advantages. For one, with the new system, the traffic density of the complete road-grid can be determined. Currently, traffic info is more or less limited to motorways and important secondary roads. Secondly, this system enables TomTom to provide accurate and near real-time information about travel-times from start to arrival, where currently only the length of certain traffic jams is reported. A third advantage is that with this system, more meaningful alternative routes can be calculated.

The system provides information 24 hours a day. The idea is to provide the user with traffic info which is at most three minutes old. This makes this new system the fastest provider of accurate traffic information. Also, the information coming from the Vodafone subscriber's phones is completely anonymous. No personal data is transmitted or used.

Subscribers

This system is primarily meant for TomTom PLUS subscribers. Apart from individual motorists, the system can also be used by road-administrators and companies. They can use the application to dynamically announce alternative routes in case of road-accidents or to plan more efficient routes for their car fleet.

For TomTom, this project is a logical progression, following their takeover of the Scottish company Applied Generics in January of this year. Applied Generics had specialised in technology which enabled it to create real-time traffic information from mobile networks. Even before the takeover, Applied Generics had already been collaborating with Vodafone and IT company Logica CMG for development of their products.