Suna’s 3rd generation traffic management product claims to address issues of data quality, reliability and transmission of its traffic management service.
Intelematics — the wing of the RACV that delivers the SUNA traffic service — today launched its 3rd generation of its SUNA traffic service, offering live traffic updates via RDS-TMC. The 3rd generation product essentially leverages the mass of road data that Intelematics has gathered about the road conditions across ten Australian cities. As an example, Intelematics representatives stated that the service will analyse more than three hundred million speed measurements per month.
SUNA 3′s got a larger footprint across ten cities in Australia — sorry Hobart and Darwin, nothing for you yet — and the 3rd generation services will be rolled out in the next few weeks. One of the more interesting aspects of the service from an end-user point of view is that it’s entirely compatible with existing SUNA devices, as it’s still using FM transmission; Intelematics representatives stated that they’re looking into more data-intensive TPEG transmission in the future which would require new hardware. For now, though, if you’ve got an older-but-still-SUNA capable device, you should start seeing more accurate data, as long as your maps are up to date.
I queried Intelematics as to what would happen with an older GPS that had out of date maps. SUNA 3 would still work, I was told; each road segment in a map is assigned a code, and if a device doesn’t have the code for that segment of map, it’ll just disregard the data, which means it’ll operate and track traffic on the roads that it does know about, although you might not get the most optimal routing instructions.
There’s an obvious comparison point here with TomTom’s GoLive service, but Intelematic’s claim here is that because it uses FM radio (technically RDS-TMC) rather than cellular 3G, it should be a more reliable signal; it claims a full update of traffic conditions is possible within two minutes of a cold start 96% of the time. The other key differentiator it’s offering is that it’s not a subscription service; if you’ve got a SUNA RDS-TMC device it’s covered for the life of the product.
Wokwon
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 8:43 AMIt’s a shame that SUNA decided to encrypt the signals so that the OEM TMC receivers in most euro cars do not work here. I suppose that this does fit with Australia’s tendency to choose different standards to the rest of the world (just look at our DTV system).
Also a shame that the system only allows an update every 5 mins which means that you’re in the problem before your GPS device knows about it.
The only real use of the system is to let you know about roadworks (which in the finest Australian traditions are still 40 zones but no one is working).
Theophilus
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 9:48 AMWokwon, where did you get the info that updates are only every 5 minutes ? I thought Suna had a rolling update system so generally it was no more than 30 seconds.
Chris
Saturday, November 19, 2011 at 10:43 AMSuna currently deliver updates every 2-3mins and with the release of Suna3 on 1/12/11 will have continuous feed with a cold start time of 2mins. With the 9000 probe vehicles and extensive access to road sensor and camera data, this system very effective and its FREE, GOlive service is approx $70 per year.
LJ
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 10:08 AMI have the Suna on my Garmin and it’s hopeless. I’ve recently bought the TOMTOM for my wife and the traffic updates are far better, although the Garmin’s interface is much better.