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I "recently" purchased a dedicated Navigon SatNav (2100) with TMC as I thought my Pocket PC Navigon software was good if the TMC was a bit of a damp squid. Today I had to go on a fairly long trip around the south-east portion of the M25 and then up the M1 to Scunthorpe. The routing was, as usual, great but since I was the passenger I could keep a watch on the TMC signal. This isn’t a very scientific experiment but these are my findings. 

First off the TMC signal was non-existent until we got past Rickmansworth, then we got a good 5 mins worth of signal. Lost it for the majority of the M25 until we got close to the M1. The M1 has a couple of longer signal windows, a couple towards Milton Keynes with the best around Derbyshire. A final little window near Scunthorpe itself. So although the coverage was sparse it was enough to give the unit time to download a reasonable amount of traffic information and it did report problems on the adjoining roads (fortunately nothing bad on the route itself).

So overall the TMC works but only in specific areas, if anyone reading this knows of these zones then please let me know, if you have anecdotal evidence of areas it works then please post a comment and perhaps we can compile a working map.