Dash to use NAVTEQ Traffic
Dash announced today that they have selected NAVTEQ as a partner to provide traffic information from NAVTEQ traffic. This is somewhat of a surprising development. As you likely know, Dash’s initial concept was to use their own fleet of customers to provide “crowd sourcing” of traffic data. People driving with the Dash Express device would help provide traffic data to other Dash drivers.
However with Dash’s announcement that they would discontinue producing hardware, things were not all rosy. It is also interesting that Dash partnered with NAVTEQ on this project since they have not been using NAVTEQ’s maps, using maps from competitor Tele Atlas instead.
The data will start flowing to Dash devices later this month.
Update: A Dash team member just posted this in their forums.
n many markets, NAVTEQ has significantly better coverage so you may begin to notice traffic data in new areas.
While true, the opposite can also be said– that INRIX has better coverage than NAVTEQ traffic in many markets as well. The Dash team member also confirmed this does represent a replacement of the INRIX data.
I’ve been a Dash user since last April. It should be noted that Dash has always used supplemental data from other companies in addition to the coverage provided by their own GPS units. That had previously been provided by Inrix, and now they switching to Navteq. They will also continue to use the data provided by their own GPS units for live traffic updates.