V70: General Real time traffic Information S/ware upgrade

[apersson850]

Originally Posted by Tatsfield

... had my 2012 system ... but the OP said that he was being asked to spend money on an update to the sat nav operating system to enable real time traffic reports. My car has this so ...

No, since your car is a 2012, just like mine, it doesn't have the Real Time Traffic Info option (RTTI). It has TMC (Traffic Message Channel).

TMC is broadcasted via the FM RDS radio service. RTTI is transmitted over the internet, and thus requires a car with Sensus Connect, not just Sensus. You need a car with the earth globe symbol at the upper right of the key cluster in the center console.

TMC is based on information provided by some kind of traffic information service. In Sweden, it's the National Road Administration Authority who runs that service. The information provided is based on information from entrepreneurs about road work, emergency services attending to accidents and other similar sources.

RTTI is based on information from some web service (Volvo doesn't specify which), which provides traffic related information. Such information is usually collected automatically, by cars reporting back their progress. Your car does that, if you have RTTI enabled when driving. Then some, more or less, clever algorithm figures out that if a certain number of cars are slowing down to a crawl at about the same place and direction, there's probably some issue. This is listed on the web service, which your car accesses to retreive that information and display it.

As we also have a 2016 model, which I upgraded from just internet maps to Sensus navigation, I've had some hands on experience with RTTI. Nowadays, if you upgrade to Sensus Navigation, RTTI is included in the upgrade. It's overly sensitive here in Sweden, frequently giving alerts just because people slow down in roundabouts, for example. But since that's an algorithm thing outside your car, there's hope that it will improve, and now at least that car will be able to benefit from it.

As our 2016 has Volvo on Call, it also has it's own modem. I can put a SIM card in the card holder in the glove compartment, and then the car will access the internet regardless of who's driving, and if there is any phone sharing internet access or not.
Cars without Volvo on Call have to rely on a phone, sharing internet access via Bluetooth or WiFi.