TomTom Gives Tele Atlas IQ Routes Data
It wasn’t too long ago that TomTom announced they would be handing over user submitted map corrections to Tele Atlas as part of the MapShare program. So it isn’t too much of a surprise that today TomTom and Tele Atlas have announced that TomTom is also handing over the data TomTom has collected for their IQ Routes project.
What was a bit more amazing however was the amount of data TomTom has collected from users who opted into the program.
The speed profiles database is derived from almost half a trillion speed measurements that TomTom customers in 25 countries have been sharing with the company over the past two years, making it unique in terms of both size and richness. Today this speed profile database already provides highly accurate 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 percent of the roads in the United States. To achieve this kind of accuracy, those 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.
Those are some remarkable figures. The data will be made available to Tele Atlas customers (including TomTom competitors) later this year. Having used this data on numerous TomTom devices, I can attest that it is a significant improvement in estimating arrival times over the previously available data.
This sharing of data has made a big difference in the accuracy of my maps. Just wanted to add that the new Tele Atlas maps using TomTom user-submitted map corrections + IQ Routes have been released.
This doesn’t just improve the new maps for TomTom devices; the modifications are built into Google Maps now as well.