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Coverage new maps known
Friday April 8, 2005 - Not long anymore now, and we'll be able to update our maps. TomTom has announced the coverage percentage of the roads per country.
One of the most important aspects for a good functioning TTG is the quality of the maps. And besides accuracy of the data, the amount of roads in the database also play a important role.
The new maps are not quite here yet, but this week TomTom already announced the coverage percentage of the new maps on their website. And to be very honest: there are a few dissapointments here and there...
Full coverage
Most regions (UK, Benelux, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Scandinavia) luckily have full coverage. TomTom only claims 99% coverage, but that's easily explained by the fact that maps can never be 100% complete. Simply because months pass between the gathering of the data and the release of the maps, and in that timeframe, a lot of changes can happen to the roads. This is normal and cannot be avoided. But every address in these regions should be pretty easy to locate.
On the other hand, there are maps where the coverage percentage is a lot less. Italy (97%) and Spain (86%) are still pretty do-able, but in a country like Portugal (43%), the risk of roads not showing up on the GO are already a lot higher!
Depth
Pretty bad is the Czech Republic where only 36% of all the streets are included in the maps. But still, things can get even worse! The absolute low is Poland (part of the German region maps), where only a mere 18% of all the present roads are mapped!
Of course, it's important to know that TomTom is dependant of map-supplier Tele Atlas for their maps. And Tele Atlas in turn, is very dependant of local authorities for their primary map data. But even taking this into account, we still think it's pretty optimistic to claim a certain area is supported if the coverage is not even 20%! We can only hope that TomTom will be so honest to state the map coverage percentages on the packaging of the maps, so nobody will encounter any nasty surprises.
All in all these are things worth considering before departing on a holiday to one of the areas where the map coverage is less than ideal. So planning beforehand might be a good idea. And even -dare we say it- packing a good old paper map, is something that definitely should be considered...