Tele Atlas

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Tele Atlas is a company founded in 1984. It delivers digital maps and dynamic content for navigation and location-based services, including personal and in-car navigation systems, such as the TomTom GPS unit, and provides data used in a wide range of mobile and internet map applications, such as Google Maps and MapQuest. Tele Atlas works with its business partners to deliver applications for emergency, business, fleet and infrastructure services. The company has also pioneered the use of mobile mapping vans to gather attribute information of road networks. This involves capturing digital images of roads and linking the GPS trail of the van to the images, allowing the coordinates to be synchronized for real world conditions of that site.

The company provides maps covering 64 countries around the world. Tele Atlas has approximately 2,300 full-time staff and contract cartographers at offices in 20 countries and uses a sophisticated network of professional drivers, mobile mapping vans and more than 50,000 data resources to deliver highly accurate and up-to-date digital maps. Tele Atlas is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TA6) and on Euronext Amsterdam (TA). The North American headquaters is located in Lebanon, New Hampshire, with its corporate offices in Boston, Massachusetts.

[edit] History

1967

While working as a member of New Haven Census Use Study team, Don Cooke, now a Tele Atlas senior scientist, helps develop the Dual Independent Map Encoding system. DIME represents the first practical application of topological data structures in computer mapping.

1980

Geographic Data Technology (GDT), which would be acquired by Tele Atlas in 2004, is co-founded by Don Cooke. Among a number of firsts, GDT becomes the first company to adapt GIS capabilities to critical business applications, and develops the first digital nationwide ZIP code boundary file for the United States.

1984

Tele Atlas is founded in the Netherlands.

1985

Etak Inc., which would be acquired by Tele Atlas in 2000, builds the Navigator, the world’s first functional, in-vehicle navigation system.

1987

Tele Atlas introduces the first PC-based, nationwide address-to-coordinates geocoder.

1989

Tele Atlas patents a technology that forms the foundation of modern “map matching” – a system that improves the ability to estimate a vehicle's position and aids in navigation.

1993

Tele Atlas, along with ETAK and Robert Bosch Group, forms the European Digital Road Map Association (EDRA), a consortium designed to accelerate the completion of a uniform, high-quality digital road map of Europe and encourage the development of relevant GIS applications.

1995

Internet mapping, now used daily by governments, businesses, and individuals throughout the world, is introduced using GDT data. That same year, Tele Atlas and Robert Bosch Group’s mapping division officially merge and the Tele Atlas European navigable digital road map is released.

2000

Tele Atlas goes public on May 26. Funds raised from the IPO are used to finance the development of Tele Atlas’ North America database. During the same year, Tele Atlas acquires ETAK, the premier US publisher of digital maps and location-based technology for in-car applications.

2003

Tele Atlas launches MultiNet North America, the continent’s most powerful turn-by-turn map database ever built. MultiNet includes traffic location codes and enables real-time traffic feeds.

2004

Tele Atlas sells a record 1.5 million maps for personal navigation (PNAV) applications worldwide. In 2004, Tele Atlas also begins rolling out Mobile Mapping, a state-of-the-art field data capture technology that utilizes survey vehicles and vans to capture digital information about specific road details and rich images faster and more accurately than traditional methods allow.

2005

Tele Atlas introduces Address Points – which pinpoint street addresses to physical buildings, sites, and parcels – as well as 2D City Maps and 3D Landmarks, becoming the first company to offer 3D digital mapping capabilities for navigation and location-based applications.

Also in 2005, Tele Atlas acquires PPWK GeoInvent, the Warsaw-based spatial information engineering company with whom Tele Atlas co-developed Mobile Mapping. The acquisition makes Tele Atlas the sole owner of Mobile Mapping technology.

2006

Tele Atlas achieves record revenues in its third quarter, shipping 81% more maps designed for personal navigation than in the same quarter the previous year. By the end of the third quarter, Tele Atlas shipped more than six million maps, surpassing the number of maps shipped in all of 2005.