NAVTEQ Joins OGC as Strategic Member

Wayland, MA, March 18, 2004 – NAVTEQ and the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced that NAVTEQ has become a Strategic Member of the OGC.As a world leading provider of digital map information for consumers and businesses, NAVTEQ has a strong interest in playing a leadership role in the development, promotion and implementation of OpenGIS® Specifications designed to enable geoprocessing and location services interoperability. At the highest level of OGC membership, NAVTEQ will participate in OGC's Strategic Advisory Committee, Planning Committee, Technical Committee and Interoperability Program, helping to shape the progress of open, service oriented architectures that enable the integration of spatial intelligence into information systems and across enterprises.”NAVTEQ believes that interoperability plays a crucial role in helping consumers and businesses use positioning technologies, wirelessly connected computers, and location information to spatially orient themselves to the world around them and help them find their destination,” said Gabriel Baum, Vice President of Operations and Infrastructure at NAVTEQ. “Becoming a Strategic Member demonstrates our commitment to helping the OGC develop and promote the open interfaces that are essential to widespread use of location based services.”David Schell, OGC's president, said, “We are indeed fortunate that NAVTEQ understands the value and importance of OGC's consensus process. We will all benefit from their participation in building the open standards infrastructure for the mobile marketplace value chain that links application developers, data publishers, content providers, device manufacturers, wireless network operators and consumers.”About NAVTEQNAVTEQ creates digital maps that power navigation and location-based services around the world. The Chicago-based company was founded in 1985 and is privately held. The Company's approximately 1,400 employees are in over 100 offices in 18 countries. For more information, visit: www.navteq.com or contact Laura Richey by phone at (312) 894-7127 or email at lrichey@chi.navteq.com .About OGCOGC is an international industry consortium of more than 250 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS® Specifications support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.– end –“