TELE ATLAS TO OFFER TOMTOM’S SPEED PROFILES DATABASE COVERING 25 COUNTRIES

Tele Atlas has gained access to TomTom NV’s speed profiles database, which will be made available to Tele Atlas customers later this year. Tele Atlas is a subsidiary of TomTom. The speed profiles database is derived from nearly half a trillion speed measurements that TomTom customers in 25 countries have been sharing with the company over the past two years. The database provides information about actual average speeds for every five minutes of the day on any day of the week on all of the roads in 23 European countries and 90% of the roads in the US. To achieve this, 18 million kilometers of roads had to be driven and measured on average more than 2,000 times at different times of the day and during different days of the week. Traditional systems use standardized estimates to calculate routes based on census data or legal speed limits, so routes are usually always the same regardless of the time, day, or situation. “These estimates ignore many things that influence how people should drive to their destinations, such as the frequencies of traffic lights, lunch breaks at large schools, speed bumps, stop signs and awkward railway crossings,” said Tele Atlas CEO Bill Henry. “Speed profiles actually contain this very specific and important local knowledge, enabling our customers to deliver unprecedented navigation quality – much better routes and much more accurate estimated times of arrival.” -Smarajit Dasgupta