Tele Atlas gets access to TomTom’s speed profiles database

28 Sep 2008

TomTom has given access to Tele Atlas to its speed profiles database covering eighteen million kilometers across road networks in Europe and North America. Tele Atlas' users will get that information later this year in a uniform, global, low footprint format.

Speed profiles transform the navigation user experience because routes are calculated using real measurements instead of rough estimates. The data including almost half a trillion speed measurements, is shared by TomTom customers in 25 countries over the past few years. Today the 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% of the roads in the US.

All eighteen million of those kilometers 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, to achieve this accuracy. Traditional systems use standardized estimates to calculate routes based on census data or legal speed limits, ignoring many issues that influence how people should drive to their destinations, such as traffic light frequencies, school lunch breaks, speed bumps, stop signs and awkward railway crossings.

Tele Atlas CEO Bill Henry points out that speed profiles contain this very specific and important local knowledge, enabling the delivery of unprecedented navigation quality - better routes and more accurate estimated times of arrival.