Tele Atlas Adds Community Input to New Map System

A couple of years back, I went to Holland’s official capital Den Haag and I was amazed to see that all taxis were having GPS system. From the airport to my hotel, it kept telling the driver to take appropriate direction, distance left to the hotel and so on. It was both voice and video enabled. I was amazed to see the quality and accuracy.

After some efforts, I found out the company that was providing these services in Europe and US since 1984 – it was Tele Atlas. At that time, it was a leading global provider of digital maps and dynamic content for navigation. The same is true even today – Tele Atlas is now part of the GPS device maker TomTom. The company has been exceptionally innovative in improvising its product and its coverage. To date with 27 offices worldwide, Tele Atlas provides map coverage to more than 200 countries directly or through its partner associates.

On 16th December 2009 they have launched a new product, MultiNet 2009. Besides using data from government documents, public safety officials, satellites and aerial imagery to produce high quality of navigation and location based services, for the first time they have increased their data reliability by adding construction companies, driver communities and individual drivers to their data provider network to strengthen their data reliability and accuracy.

Since community data is part of the map information now, Tele Atlas points out they will have "stringent review and validation processes".

Now their coverage includes Asia Pacific region, Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey besides United States, Mexico, Europe and Canada. The accuracy of their maps based on sixteen attributes is zeroed down to five meters or less setting new industry standards in terms of roundabouts, street names, traffic flow etc. The application works on GPS devices, smart phones and online.

http://technorati.com/technology/article/tele-atlas-adds-community-input-to/