Jan/Feb 2006

Our impression

There are over 8,000 blue TrafficMaster cameras on UK roadsides and overhead gantries measuring traffic flow speeds and densities - and there are various ways in which you can tap into this information.

On of the more recent solutions to hit the market is one from Traffic TV, which can deliver the information direct to your mobile phone or PDA. You get you both live traffic data (supplied by Trafficmaster) and real-time CCTV camera pictures from the entire UK trunk and motorway network (excluding Ireland).

The idea is that this lets you plan your journey to avoid traffic hot spots and, for example, check whether it's worth paying to use the M6 toll road to avoid the M6 around Birmingham. If you're stuck in a traffic jam, you can find out how long the delay will be and check radio reports for accuracy .

Traffic TV works on most Java-enabled mobile phones and PDAs running Pocket PC 2003 or smartphone 2003 with a J2ME midlet manager, and uses WAP to download the data to the phone or PDA.

The traffic data is displayed as a map showing the UK's main roads. When you connect to the Traffic TV service, data on delays is sent to your phone and flashes up on top of the map.

When the map starts up it is centred on London. Pressing the "zoom out" button twice reveals the UK map, which shows the approximate location and severity of the jams. You scroll around the map using the navigation pad on the mobile. You can also bookmark your preferred view to show when TrafficTV launches.

Zooming in reveals more detail, including how fast the traffic is moving or how many extra minutes the journey will take. The flashing icons show where the congestion is: red is very slow or stationary traffic; orange is moderately slow traffic; yellow is slow traffic.

You can also download live CCTV video clips. There are five levels of zoom; level 4, for example, shows the actual speed or minutes delay displayed, plus the road junction numbers and CCTV camera locations.

Payment is on a monthly subscription basis, which is currently £3.33 per month, plus any data download charges levied by the network operator.

Our verdict

The system sets out to be both clever and simple to use, and we found that it pretty much succeeds on both counts.