Netherlands-based GPS maker TomTom recently introduced a clever new way to monitor traffic that can be useful to GPS users. TomTom's new "High Definition Traffic" system monitors the electronic signals that are exchanged between mobile phones and the remote antenna towers that serve them, creating an accurate, real-time picture of where the phones are and how fast they are moving. In other words, TomTom is measuring traffic speed and location by measuring the speed and location of phones within vehicles.
TomTom purchases only anonymous signaling data from partner Vodafone to power this service, company representatives say, and no conversation or personally identifying information is used as part of the data feed that makes the service possible.
This method of gathering traffic data differs dramatically from the way current traffic monitoring services handle the task. For example, services such as the Total Traffic Network gather traffic data from a combination of sources including local traffic authorities, incidents reported by first responders, and fleet vehicles.
TomTom claims that the new HD Traffic approach provides up to five times more traffic updates and covers ten times more roads in the Netherlands, so drivers can determine which, if any alternate routes are choked, as well.
Traffic data is used by traffic avoidance-enabled in-car GPS devices to display useful traffic awareness and avoidance information to the user.
For now, HD Traffic is available only in the Netherlands, but is set for additional release in the United Kingdom in the first half of 2008, and in additional European countries in 2008. There are no current plans to offer the service in the U.S. a TomTom representative says.
