By Technology Times Reporter

Spatial Technologies Ltd (STL), Nigeria’s foremost and largest producer of accurate digital has introduced an online mapping and location-based service, Map Network Technologies Ltd (mapntl.com), said to be the nation's largest mapping portal.

MapNTL.com, which says it is the number one online mapping and location-based service resource in Nigeria that enables visitors to get accurate driving turn-by-turn direction from one point or business in Lagos to the other. Coverage is also provided for across Nigeria, the company said in a statement.

Mapntl.com contains street map of Lagos totaling 5,400km in length  which if laid end-to-end is about five times the distance from Port Harcourt to Kano and more than two-third of earth’s equatorial radius.

Business Development Manager of STL, Anthony Lawrence, the parent company of mapntl.com and the provider of the mapping data used to develop the website says “the planimetric accuracy of the Lagos street map used for mapntl.com is about 1m. Each street in the database has a name, a suburb, the speed limit, and direction. The roads are classified into Express, Major and Minor roads. This level of accuracy and quality is the direct result of the fact that STL literally drives through the street of Lagos to collect the field attributes used to develop the road network data. Lagos street map is just one of the over 100 city maps that STL had developed, the rest can be found at http://www.spatialtechnologiesltd.com/Data_Catalogue.php.”

According to him, “The investment in our database has been significant, over N18 million to date” citing that over 9 million people inhabit Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria.

He adds that Mapntl.com removes the problem of locating places in the city as visitors get accurate turn-by-turn driving direction from any point A to point B in Lagos from the comfort of their homes or offices where internet connection is available. Routes are calculated based on both “Fastest” and “Quickest” options.

Visitors to the website can also get driving direction to over 25,000 business locations within Lagos alone as its database contains the location of over 524 Bank branches and ATM locations, 2,424 restaurants, 2,580 hotels/Motels, 2,451 schools, 2,370 open markets, 982 shopping malls/complexes, 5,764 major offices, 1,267 petrol stations, 3,358 churches, 1,837 mosques, 478 Estates all within Lagos alone. Businesses can be searched by using their names e.g. Mr Biggs or area e.g. Oyingbo.

According to the company, what a visitor simply needs to do is to enter the starting address such as a road name (e.g Ikorodu Rd) or a business name (e.g. Access Bank). The next task is to enter the area where the starting address is located e.g Ikeja. This task is repeated for the destination point and a map appears with the route clearly drawn against the backdrop of colourful street map of Lagos from the starting address to the destination. This map is particularly handy for use as a street map. The zoom function lets you determine which section of the map you wish to view. You are able to pan in all four cardinal directions (North, East, South and West). Mapntl.com also contains “call-out” functionality that allows visitors to click on any business category icon on the map and get behind the scene information about any business such as name of company, address, suburb, etc. Mapntl.com also contains impressive geo-spatial search engine that allows consumers to search for businesses by name or by location and use these in providing point-to-point driving directions.

Founder of mapntl.com and the CEO of STL, Ireti Ajala adds that, “the combination of accurate and superb mapping capability and innovative driving directions offered by mapntl.com gives users an incredibly powerful and easy way to find what they want and get where they want to go. Unlike paper maps that contain just static information which easily gets outdated, mapntl.com offers dynamic content and rich information about Lagos roads, suburb and business locations along a route in a way that cannot ever be possible using the traditional paper maps. In addition, mapntl.com is more easily updated and the information is fresh and more accurate than a paper map”

The company’s Corporate Sales Manager, Samson Edward, says, “Mapntl.com had shown that Nigerians appreciate well thought-out web-based solution.”

According to him, the site which was launched in October, this year has so far registered more than 49,000 impressions, and has a unique user base of over 32,000.

According to him, “figures like these make MapNTL.com an excellent site for companies that wish to promote services or products with a location element in Nigeria. MapNTL.com therefore will get more people to the front doors of businesses in Lagos in a way that will surprise the business owners themselves.”

He adds that “interested companies who wish to have the location of their businesses on mapntl.com can do so without any charge. All that is required is for STL to take the geographic coordinate of such business location and add it to mapntl.com’s database. This is done free of charge.”