TMC

TMC (Traffic Message Channel) is a digital transmission channel that represents a segment of the FM broadcasts’ RDS code. Navigation devices can interpret traffic news (road blocks, accidents, congestion, border crossing, waiting times etc.) broadcasts through that are transmitted via Traffic Message Channel.

TMC (or RDS-TMC is the other common name) is a mature technology and it is set on international standards which is now the de facto standard for broadcast traffic information in Europe and the United States.

History of TMC

EBU (European Broadcasting Union) began – together with Bosch/Blaupunkt and Philips – the development of the standard in the mid 80’s. The first official TMC broadcast started in 1997 – but at that time messages appeared only in text form on the display of the car audio. However there was not a big interest for the service, the number of the TMC-capable radios remained minuscule for many years.
The spread of navigation devices gave a new impetus for the development of the TMC. Due to the GPS positioning of these devices, they can display the TMC messages site specific and graphically, more than that, they are able to recalculate a route avoiding the congestion.

TMC Today

Today, TMC service is available in almost every western European country, as well as in more and more Eastern European territories including Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. TrafficNav Ltd. is the solution provider for a number of countries. Currently the vast majority of the circulating navigation devices are capable of receiving the TMC messages either alone or supplemented with a TMC antenna. The devices visualize (with icons that appear on the map) the traffic messages and also display them in text format, in addition to suggesting a bypass if possible. The beauty of the technology is that TMC messages’ text display depends on which language the user sets, this means that e.g. in Hungary foreign drivers can easily and accurately understand the emitted information.

Live traffic over internet

Traffic information is also available in xml format, which can be delivered to any Internet connected device (personal navigation device, smartphone, in-dash system, etc.) or integrated into third party live traffic service. In this case the data is delivered over IP, via mobile data communication network.

Content Partners

TrafficNav works with several type of information sources to have accurate and full scope live information for live traffic service:

• motorway operators, road authorities
• government institutions
• fleet management systems
• road sensors
• traffic camera systems
• community reports

Location tables

Quality of live traffic service is very dependent on the geocoding technology used. For map independent traffic information TrafficNav develops and maintains high quality private and public location tables that provides good basis for premium map independent information services.

For more information please feel free to contact us!