Suna’s 3rd generation traffic management product claims to address issues of data quality, reliability and transmission of its traffic management service.
TomTom’s HD Traffic service has finally arrived in Australia with the launch of four new ‘Go Live’ in-car GPS devices starting at $299. (Yes, they’ve also updated the TomTom iPhone app). And unlike the Suna traffic service used by Garmin and Navman, TomTom uses a built-in SIM card (not FM) to track and update user data, official incident reports, and real time traffic flows. HD Traffic also works in both metro and regional areas.
The SUNA traffic channel is now in pretty much every high end satnav on the market, but it turns out what we’ve seen so far is just “phase one”. This week the company behind SUNA, Intelematics, has taken the lid off phase two, and it means a big improvement over traffic accuracy.
More Christmas themed savings, this time from Navman. They’ve cut the price of their entire MY satnav range by $50, and thrown in free map updates for three years. They’ve also added SUNA traffic to their entry-level model.
One thing the iPhone’s multitude of proper satnav apps don’t offer is live traffic updating from the SUNA traffic channel. If you have a dedicated satnav with traffic support, you can now avoid traffic in Canberra comfortably. And not just by getting the hell out of Canberra…
On top of using the sensors in the roads to get the latest traffic information, the guys at SUNA are now monitoring Sydney taxis to get an even better look at how traffic is flowing. Although I hope they don’t pay too much attention at changeover time…
I have no idea how I missed this yesterday, but Gus over at Lifehacker has a great interview with the CEO of Intelematics – the company behind the SUNA traffic channel, about all things GPS.
