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Ever since it came out, the idea of having a GPS that can reroute you around Traffic Jams, bad weather, road construction, and other road problems has been a very intriguing thing to me. But too badly, the idea was mostly concentrated to Europe, or to very select testing areas in the USA.

Lately though, I have begun to notice a great increase in GPS equipment available in the USA that has the features needed to be able to report this extra data to the software that you are using. It has not been a big feature all over the papers and web yet, but it is sneaking its way into GPS equipment all around us in the USA.

This got me thinking about the subject even more and kick started my search for more information. After looking around on the web, I found that the service is becoming broader in the USA and is even available in 49 major cities!

Garmin has a map on their site that shows the cities that are currently wired for the Traffic Message Channels (TMC).
http://www.garmin.com/products/gtm10/coverage.jsp#usa

It may not be as broad as the UK or other areas in Europe, but it is a good start and leads me to believe that we will start seeing this as a major selling point in GPS in the very near future. There has not been much new in the consumer GPS market lately, and this could be that one big feature to kick start the GPS market again.

I have also heard reports around (NOTHING CONFIRMED) that many larger GPS software companies are working on support for the TMC information and finding new ways to display this information and work it into their existing software. The only thing that tends to worry me a bit is that the TMC is also the same as the RDS that many car radios have been adding lately. I personally have RDS on my car and also live in one of the cities that have RDS, and it really is nothing amazing. It is usually better just to turn on the news radio station. But hopefully, this will be redesigned and in a device with a screen that can graphically explain what is going on (the GPS), be a much more powerful tool to the everyday driver.

I think this is just one more step to the car driving us around, and it is just plain cool for those of us that just hate traffic jams and have to deal with it constantly.

In the near future, I hope to bring you some more info and facts on the subject, but as of right now, info on TMC GPS in the USA is rather limited as it is very new. You never know though, this may be one of those things like Wifi Internet that started as a small expensive item, and now has turned into something that almost everyone has it seems!

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Chris Leckness (3571 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.