A buggy alternative to Google Maps just launched in Pakistan

Photo credit: Pixabay.

High-speed mobile data services launched in Pakistan barely two years ago, but there’s already more than 30 million 3G and 4G subscribers. The country imported smartphones worth almost a billion dollars last year, making it the sixth-fastest growing market in the space.

It’s quite literally on the cusp of a digital revolution.

The opportunity to serve the nascent, mobile-first population is obvious. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens are coming online for the first time every month, and while they’re definitely downloading Facebook and WhatsApp, they’re also scouring the web for media, games, and localized services.

TPL Maps employs a team of 50 surveyors who physically visit landmarks across the country.

Hoping to capitalize on this meteoric shift toward smartphones is TPL Maps, built by car navigation company TPL Trakker. The app fashions itself as a serious contender to Google Maps and comes with the usual bag of tricks, such as turn-by-turn voice navigation, local landmarks, and estimated drive times.

Adeel Hashmi, head of maps at TPL Trakker, says the team has added over 1.5 million “points of interest” in the app with over 300,000 kilometers of road network. In an obvious reference to Google Maps, he adds that the figure is more than “any other mapping service in Pakistan.”

First thoughts

I tried the app in the southern port city of Karachi and it’s safe to say that I won’t be swapping it for Google Maps any time soon.

It managed to find directions to big landmarks like the airport easily enough but failed miserably when I searched for lesser-known places, such as local embassies and coffee shops. Furthermore, the user interface left a lot to be desired – it isn’t clean and neat like Google’s and loads far more slowly.

There’s no live traffic updates either, contravening what the startup claims in a press release. I subjected it to about 30 minutes of frenetic use and it struggled to keep up – eventually crashing.

Just to double check I wasn’t being unfair on TPL Maps, I ran my previous searches through Google Maps and it worked like a charm.

Photo credits: Kamran Aslam.

Difficult road ahead

The startup has its work cut out. It’s up against a behemoth like Google, which has relentlessly refined its navigation tech and spent billions of dollars doing so. Even Apple wasn’t able to compete – to the point that Apple Maps is now treated with almost universal derision.

Ambitious plans