Mobile Location Services: The Definitive Guide

“Best of Breed” Maps

Map databases that contain sufficient detail to support mobile location service applications, such as routing, are extremely complex and time consuming to build and maintain. As of 2001, no single map data vendor provided a suitable worldwide map database for location-based services. In fact, even within continents such as North America and Europe, quality of data varies considerably from one map vendor to another. In Europe, as an example, one map data vendor might have excellent data for Germany, but very poor data for the United Kingdom. In North America, one map data vendor might have excellent data in urban areas, but very poor data in rural areas. Thus, it is often necessary to combine various map data sources to achieve ...