Subscription Based GPS Navigation Units
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
ran an article over the weekend describing the challenges faced by 911 dispatchers and other people dependent on accurate and current map data:
Althoff is on the front lines of a growing challenge in the ever-expanding Twin Cities region: keeping on top of the increasingly far-flung web of new streets and addresses, a process that map companies now update daily instead of yearly or even monthly.
Across the metro into the farthest reaches of suburbia, five new streets are being created every single day.
Tens of thousands of people need to know about every one of them -- from workers delivering building materials to create the streets, to real estate agents selling the homes, to teens delivering pizzas to families moving into the new neighborhoods.
One has to wonder why, in a world where new addresses are created every day, GPS navigation units are basically static devices that grow more and more obsolete from the day they leave the factory. The obvious answer to this dilemma is for GPS manufacturers to switch to subscription based services with continuous automatic updates.
This seems like a particularly challenging problem for real estate agents working in the far reaches of suburbia where the most new streets are being created. Surely, they'd be willing to pay an ongoing fee for accurate directions to new developments.
How should the updates be done? Here are a few options:
1. Via WiFi using your home network while your car is parked for the night?
2. Via EVDO while you're driving around town?
3. Via satellite?
4. Plug in and sync?
Which would you prefer? How much would you be willing to pay for a monthly GPS subscription?
Yes, a subscription service would be an improvement over the current situation. However it would not solve the whole problem. A major bottleneck is in getting the information to the map creators from the thousands of municipalities that are involved. Most of the information is not realized until a property enters the tax roles which may be weeks or months after occupancy. The fact that 911 operators don't always have the needed information is evidence of the hole I am addressing here.
GPS systems are developed and implemented with public tax monies. Therefor private corporations should not be able to sell or create a monopoly on technology provided by the government.
Good point, Mr Gates. As far as I can tell, the competition is over who can make great interfaces that help guide people.
1. Posted by: Roald Marth on December 10, 2006 7:08 PM:
Amen is all I can say.....I WANT to pay a subscription fee, $10-20 per month or more, to have up to date GPS maps and Points of Interest, further the device should simply surf Google Local to pull in addresses that way... it should be an internet connected device.