French Motorway operator ASF (Autoroutes du Sud de la France) and Orange Business Services have joined forces to develop a solution to provide real-time traffic information.

The two companies have announced this week they have launched in December 2009 a one year experiment on nearly 1,200 kms of roads. The aim is to deliver real-time road traffic information on different types of road network: motorways, national and departmental highways and peri-urban express ways.

This solution, draws on the pooling of each partner's information sources: in one hand traffic data collected in real time by ASF using sensors, traffic count stations, cameras and patrols carried out on its network; in the other hand Orange Labs is using GSM signal data on their mobile network to statistically estimate motorists' speed via their mobile on all road networks.

The traffic information will be updated every six minutes said Orange in a press release.

Delayed Trafffic Solution
To create real-time traffic data from GSM signal is quite a complex technology and it seems Orange France is learning it the hard way. Indeed, in October 2008 the wireless operator had already that this system would be deployed nation-wide in France in 2009 (read here). Announcing a large scale trial in February 2010 makes us believe that a commercial solution is not likely to be available before 2011.

In the meantime, TomTom, helped by the Vodafone Group, launched a similar solution, HD Traffic, in many European countries in 2008 and 2009. While quite not perfect at launch, it now offers a decent service on TomTom’s connected PNDs. NAVTEQ also announced in February 2008 an agreement with Telefonica (read here) to work on this type of technology, but since then nothing has been heard again on that partnership.