Report author and SBD specialist on Navigation and Traffic Information consumer and technical trends, Andrew Hart, talks about developing pan-European TPEG services.

Q: TPEG sounds like just another acronym to add to the ever-growing list of technologies that are being promoted for in-car navigation systems! But what are the real benefits of TPEG compared to existing services such as RDS TMC?

Andrew Hart: In some ways TPEG was developed to overcome many of the limitations that RDS TMC currently places on service providers.  Whilst today service providers can only really use RDS TMC to deliver event-based traffic information, TPEG enables service providers to offer a range of additional travel-based information such as dynamic parking availability, weather or even fuel pricing information.  Better yet, TPEG is a fully-flexible platform onto which new applications can be added in the future as new consumer needs arise.  TPEG also overcomes some of the technical restrictions that service providers often struggle with when delivering RDS TMC messages.  Amongst these is TPEG's ability to pin-point the exact location of events using Latitude/Longitude coordinates, rather than relying on pre-defined location codes.  These are just some of the many improvements that has led to TPEG being widely accepted as the natural success to RDS TMC.

Q: And who are the key European players that are developing these next-generation TPEG services?

AH: For now there are two key groups emerging that will lead the development of next-generation traffic and travel services within the automotive market.  The digital map suppliers and the traditional traffic content providers.  For the digital map suppliers, this marks a logical step from providing relatively static content (such as map attributes and POIs), towards providing highly dynamic traffic and travel content.  Navteq's recent acquisition of T-Traffic and ongoing trials for extracting flow data from GPS-enabled smartphones places it in a strong position to develop next-generation traffic services across Europe.  Whilst TeleAtlas has yet to announce similar services, SBD believes that TomTom will soon be looking for ways to sell its rapidly growing HD Traffic services to vehicle manufacturers through the newly acquired TeleAtlas, although to do so it will need to shift towards using TPEG rather than its current proprietary encoding approach.

With the new arrival of new competition, traditional traffic information providers are also keen to develop their own next generation traffic and travel services in order to avoid becoming tier-two service providers to the much bigger digital map suppliers.  INRIX has already announced ambitious plans to expand into Europe, although unlike others it is planning mainly to aggregate existing data rather than to find new sources (which could potentially put it at a disadvantage).  A consortium of existing RDS TMC service providers is also known to be working together to create a homogenous TPEG service within their core markets whilst expanding their services across other markets in Europe.

All these planned services point to the expansion of traffic information from being provided at a country-specific level, to the deployment of pan-European next-generation services.  Whilst it is likely that RDS TMC services will continue to be offered by national service providers, there will be a greater drive to provide TPEG services on a pan-European level in order to reduce costs, decrease complexity and ensure that the services are homogenous.

Q: One of the big question marks for TPEG seems to be over the approach used for delivering next-generation services to the car.  How do you see TPEG services being delivered in the future?

AH: That is the golden question being asked by vehicle manufacturers and service providers alike, particularly as service shift from national to pan-European.  In theory TPEG can be delivered over any digital bearer, such as DAB, DVB-H, satellite radio or even cellular networks.  In practice, however, vehicle manufacturers will only want to implement a single communication link (preferably broadcast) for TPEG in order to reduce cost and complexity.  But in reality, there is still no truly pan-European digital broadcast bearer.  DAB and DVB-H both continue to grow in Europe, but due to commercial, legislative and bureaucratic challenges both these bearers are struggling to become pan-European.  Ondas is due to launch a pan-European satellite radio services by 2011, but they face even greater commercial challenges (particularly in the current economic crisis) due to the high cost of launching satellites.  The alternative to broadcasting data is to deliver TPEG messages using cellular networks, which have almost ubiquitous coverage across Europe.  The cost of delivering large quantities of dynamic content rises significantly when using GSM networks, as does the cost of roaming agreements between network operators.

So the delivery channel for TPEG remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks, and understanding how to balance cost and coverage will be key to the success of future services.

Q: What are the other pitfalls that you think the automotive industry should watch out for in developing TPEG services and receivers?

AH: As with any new technologies, there are still plenty of other pitfalls that service providers and navigation suppliers need to avoid.  The most prominent of these is the greater potential for incompatible services and receivers.  One of the major headaches for current RDS TMC service providers and suppliers is that the RDS TMC standard is open to too much interpretation on how it can be implemented.  This problem could grow exponentially with TPEG, as the range of potential applications and bearers increases.  The need for service and receiver implementation guidelines is therefore much greater, and must be a high priority for the industry before services and receivers are launched.

TPEG must also avoid the fate of many other telematics applications, which stumbled at the first hurdle because service providers and vehicle manufacturers failed to take into account the business models.  RDS TMC has succeeded, in part, because cost is hidden into the overall price of the navigation systems.  Consumers therefore perceive RDS TMC to be free.  The cost of TPEG services and hardware, however, are likely to be too expensive (at least in the short-term) to hide into the overall cost of the navigation system.  Service providers, vehicle manufacturers and navigation suppliers will therefore need to develop alternative business models that take into account consumer reluctance to pay ongoing fees.

So there are still challenges for TPEG, despite it widely being seen as the successor of RDS TMC.  However, SBD still believes that the benefits that next generation traffic and travel services can offer drivers will be sufficient to encourage the automotive industry to collaboratively begin implementing solutions.