TomTom LIVE - Success or Failure?

algypan · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:10 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the information Mike I have two months to go with my freeby and I have been toying with getting one I havnt seen much writeup on It though so I assume the performance should be as good as the ones used on the 720s

mikealder · Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:15 pm Post subject:

It works OK in the UK which suffers from poor signal strength in some areas which results in no signal, this is the same for all RDS-TMC receivers used in this country.
If you don't mind the string aerial you could always get the mini-USB RDS receiver and connect that to your existing mount, that would also offer a working solution (at a cheaper price).
For the best reception I connect my receivers to the car aerial, this overcomes the issue with reception in poor signal areas (as I live in such a location) - Mike

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

Does anyone know what, if anything, TomTom are doing to try to ensure thal all A roads (and hopefully all B roads eventually) are included in the HD traffic maps, e.g. on the route planner? This seems to update every minute and looks very good.

However, there are some clear traffic jams that get missed. They are often on the smaller roads (e.g. A404 Marlow Hill in High Wycombe) and daily occurrences (pretty notorious ones) if you ask someone from the area, but they only get covered for part of the time. For example, in the mornings from 8am to 9.30am the traffic is pretty bad going up the hill, but only about 8.50am does anything show up on the HD traffic route planner. Again in the evening, from about 3.30pm until 6.30pm there is a jam down the hill, which sometimes doesn't show for the whole period.

I have a VF mobile and it seems that the reception on that hill is fine, but nothing shows. I have a 530 with GPRS traffic (which doesn't show anything either, 80% of the time) so I can't verify it real time with an X40 in my car, but I would have thought that most of the data showing on the route planner and on the HD traffic page would get to the in-car units...

Has anyone has similar 'local' experiences, either good or bad...?

mikealder · Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 11:58 am Post subject:

The speed on the road in question has to be lower than that used by IQ Routes 2 for an incident/ delay to be triggered. If the incident you are talking about happens every day at or around the same time then IQ routes will already contain a very low speed for that stretch of road - Mike

Graeme2812 · Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 1:41 pm Post subject:

I still stand by a few theories I've concluded in the time I've used the HD service.
1) Tomtom do not apply VF SIM movement coverage 24/7.
2) Tomtom do not apply VF SIM movement coverage to all areas that they claim.

e.g 1)
I'll plan a route and be told a travel time of lets say 1Hr 50 and an eta of lets say 13:00. Now to me this should include any predicted delays from IQR. From experience, part way along this route (Usually A/M class roads), and into congested traffic causing the ETA to increase I would see no mention of this on the traffic service. To me this would be where I would expect a traffic issue to be flagged. So why not? I can only assume that tomtom are not covering that section of road, or they do cover this section of road but are not providing traffic information at this particular time (i.e not 24/7)

e.g 2)
A local junction (A90/A972) is regularly shown up as a single incident of congested traffic on my 730 RDS for a stretch of about 3 miles, same too on my 540. You can then proceed to drive this stretch of road and find no holdups at all. What I've found is come around 16:30 (Start of peak times) this section of road miraculously continues to show congestion however in far smaller segments, and includes surrounding A-class roads approaching the area (Namely the A929) and produces more accurate times for passing through each individual section of these roads. Come around 17:30 (end of peak times), the traffic congestion returns to show what it was showing prior to around 16:30, the single incident of 3 or so miles of congested traffic thats never usually there. I've experienced the exact same scenarios on similar stretches of roads in my area too. Ofcourse the times are estimates, but you get my point.

This seems to happen every day, particularly on Fridays in this location. I get the feeling that they [Tomtom] are not providing VF SIM movement data 24/7, and for many areas are simply relying on the other sources which are woefully inaccurate in my experience. Whilst I accept that the VF SIM movement data is only one source of there data, I am sceptical about how much of the other data they source is accurate and actually used.

I think TomTom have the capability to produce an excellent service in HD traffic, if only they can improve there sources for information and improve coverage, or at least be honest about the coverage they currently provide in both hours of operation and geographically.
_________________
Graeme Bennett
Go 540 LIVE
App. 9.510.1234792.1 (2039,04/04/2013)
United Kingdom & ROI v945.6174

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

Mike,

Thanks for your info. The problem I have with TomTom's practice of only showing a delay when the current speed is less than the IQ routes speed, is that when I'm sitting in this (daily) traffic the TT continuosly puts the arrival time back by the period I've been sat in the traffic for. This suggests that their IQ routes information for that road at that time is wrong - if it was right, why would it keep putting my ETA back when it should already know how long it takes to get from A to B at that time? That's what I can't reconcile with my own experience.

Graeme, you may well be right there. I don't think they operate the VF position data over such a short period that you're suggesting, but perhaps not 24/7 (like you say). It may be that the server they bought to do the HD traffic work for them can't cope with such a huge amount of information coming onto and off of it so quickly. As the numbers of jams in their detection area have increased and the number of users downloading the data has increased so much since HD traffic started that maybe their server just can't cope with 100% geographical coverage 24/7. But then, how much would a server cost vs. their potential revenues if HD traffic worked perfectly...?!

DaveMatthews · Regular Visitor Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221

Friday afternoon was an "interesting" day for traffic around the Preston/Blackpool area, with myriad accidents and hold-ups. My 940 dutifully reported problems on the M55 and M6 but utterly failed to pick up on the fact that the A6 had almost ground to a standstill just north of Preston, as had, inevitably, several roads which join it. Indeed these problems had certainly been notified by Radio 2.

At first I thought that perhaps TomTom had decided they were only going to report hold-ups on motorways but other A-roads around Blackpool were being flagged up, so I don't understand this inconsistency.

Planned road closures are still a problem. There was one near my home on Saturday which was being notified via TMC/Classic FM but nothing showed up on HD Traffic. There was mention earlier in the thread about TomTom using a number of sources of information - presumably iTIS is not one of them?

I have to say, though, given the constant radio reception problems and lack of timeliness, TMC is still a long way short of HD.

--

Cheers

Dave

matthewj · Frequent Visitor Joined: Apr 03, 2006 Posts: 751

There is another aspect of this that needs to be considered: cell towers and statistics. Some journeys are going to have obvious patterns as someone travels along a road. Cells on motorways are consistent and typically close to the motorway. So it will be easy to work out the speeds of cars. But in some places, the towers are going to be in the centre of a town, and some on the outskirts. Working out that jumping from one to another when buildings start getting in the way is going to be a lot harder. For example, at different sides of our office I can either get the mast along the road, or one about 10 miles away. So sometimes it will be easy for a congestion to be calculated, and other times hard.

DennisN · Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 12:57 pm Post subject:

gatorguy6996 · Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:01 pm Post subject:

One potentially good result from TomTom's "Live" growing pains:

The live devices are so far selling poorly from what I hear, well short of TomTom's goal of 1Million connected devices by years' end. This is hampering the effectiveness, marketability and revenue potential of HDTraffic and live services. So IMO, TomTom is going to have a change of heart and release a "live" adapter for the existing x20/30 range devices. I would not be surprised to see an announcement along those lines by June/July.
_________________
Garmin 1695 / 255 / 760 w/MSN - Droid w/Google nav + Navigon - Navigon 8100T - Dakota10 - GPSMap76C - GeoMate Jr.

jpg1 · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 20, 2009 Posts: 61

I certainly hope you're right gatorguy6996!

That would, I believe, be a good marketing decision from TomTom, as the number of Live connected users would shoot up, making the number of units sending back speed data to the servers every 3(?) minutes (without the mast problems mentioned earlier) shoot up too. Therefore the accuracy of the data would increase and I'm sure they'd get the benefit of the improved publicity. The sales of the new X40 units would rise, the revenue and profits would also rise, and they would not have to fight so hard with the limited data they have now to get it working properly. IMO, their decision not to sell the Liver Services adapter for the existing units is seriously hampering the effectiveness of HD traffic. When they were planning this project, they must have had a 'minimum number' of Live connected users necessary for HD traffic to be truly effective. I bet they're nowhere near to that number now. I can understand why they want people to upgrade to the X40 units, but they needed to get the launch of the HD traffic service right in order to do that. Let's face it, the "time-to-market" was not as critical as they thought. As far as I'm aware, there is no competitor close to being ready to launch a similar service - not even Nokia Maps - and those that do launch in the future will surely have the same problems with low subscriber numbers? It's time to re-think your product strategy TomTom. By the way, I'm in product management so feel free to give me a call... :p

Andy_P · Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:59 pm Post subject:

matthewj · Frequent Visitor Joined: Apr 03, 2006 Posts: 751

phillevy · Regular Visitor Joined: Mar 01, 2006 Posts: 90

What I seem to be getting more and more often now in the morning is it updating, but when you browse the map there are no incidents shown. This is worse than it being unable to connect, as without checking the map I am mislead into thinking my route is clear. This only happens in the mornings on my way in, so is obviously server-related.
This issue seems to have slowly got worse for me since getting the 540 and all TomTom's support could come up with is to ask what make mobile phone I use so they don't even know how their own product works!

Seamaster · Frequent Visitor Joined: Jun 05, 2006 Posts: 331

Well, my Live subscription was shortly about to run out and they got their £79 out of me for a year.

Was easy to do in Home on my Mac, a couple of clicks, and when I logged-in on my 740, all the dates for the Live services were pushed out to a year beyond the expiration of my free trial period.

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