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By Chris Nicholls
SYDNEY: TomTom has announced it will have live traffic updates on its devices sold on the east coast from late July, thanks to service provider Intelematics confirming the date for the Sydney and Brisbane roll-out.
Speaking at a launch for its new range today, TomTom Australia and New Zealand marketing manager, Chris Kearney, said customers who purchase an additional antenna, set to be priced at approximately $150, will be able to access the information.
“From the fourth week of July … we will be starting to deliver traffic services with our partners Suna, who are a division of Intelematics.
“With the addition of an antenna to our devices, we’ll start getting live traffic services through Sydney, Melbourne [and] Brisbane. What this will do is give you a flow of information of incident data to enable our customers to better navigate around incidents or monitor flow, and it also gives surety of arrival time,” said Kearney.
The estimated $150 antenna cost will include a lifetime subscription to the live updates for the device, he said.
Customers ho purchase the antenna, which latches onto a set radio frequency in each city, will not only get arrival time estimates and incident information, but also length of delay estimates and detour options.
Kearney also confirmed most TomTom devices sold already will be able to use the live traffic update feature, as long as customers have purchased the WhereIs Version 15 map update. He said a full list of compatible devices would be published at a later date.
Intelematics chief executive, Adam Game, who attended the launch, also confirmed Canberra, which will miss out on the east coast rollout, will gain a live traffic update service “pre-Christmas”.
He also explained why Canberra, despite being the nation’s capital, had missed out on the east coast rollout, saying the city’s lack of traffic, as well as its consequent lack of traffic lights, which Intelematics installs sensors in to help measure traffic flow, were major factors.
As a result, he said, when Canberra came on-line, it would use a slightly different information gathering system.
Game also said he hoped Adelaide and Perth’s networks would become available at the same time as Canberra.
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