Mobile Parking in the City Centre
It is possible to pay for parking via
mobile phone in Tallinn. The service introduced by Estonia's
leading mobile connection operator EMT has been actively
used by drivers since July 2000.
The most innovative GSM Wireless Service.
M-Parking was a nominee for the most innovative GSM Wireless
Service for customers showing innovation in development,
design, market appeal or usability in the offering of new
wireless based services to customers at the recent GSM Association
conference in Cannes.
The success story. Since its introduction
in summer last year, MParking has gained 25% of the total
parking turnover and more than 10 000 new customers. From
the point of view of the Tallinn City government, they have
eliminated debt collection risks and reduced the necessary
bureaucracy needed to administer conventional parking systems,
thus following up on their promise of reducing administrative
costs using new technology.
 Statistics.
Payment: 25% of total parking turnover
Usability: 22,000 operations monthly
Number of clients: 10,000
Number of cars in Tallinn: 200,000
Number of parking places: 2,500 - 2,700
How it works?
The principle behind M-Parking is that the operator
offers micro-billing services to the traffic regulation
agency. Through an operator, their attendants can get information
on cars, which have paid for parking using the M-Parking
service. For car owners, M-Parking provides relief from
coins, coupons, scratch cards, etc. They pay for parking
while paying their mobile phone monthly bill. And they pay
ONLY for the time they actually parked.
Starting a parking session. To begin parking, the
customer sends an SMS message with the license number of
the car and the location code of the area he is parking
in. This will fix the beginning time of the parking session.
Alternately parking sessions can be started through WAP.
Ending a parking session. To end the
parking session, the customer needs to call a short number,
which will then fix the ending time. The client will receive
an SMS for feedback with the time and the amount of money
was used for parking.
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