Next month Vienna, Austria will become the first major western European city where motorists can pay for parking simply by pushing buttons on their mobile phones.
The Austrian capital, with its horse-drawn carriages in the historical downtown area, is going high-tech with a concept dubbed "m-parking," which allows cellphone-equipped drivers to send short text messages allowing them to pay for parking minutes.
Subscribers will no longer have to go to the nearest newsstand to buy parking vouchers.
They can log on to a Web site with their mobiles and type in 30, 60 or 90 minutes, depending on the amount of time they want to leave their cars, then settle the bill later along with their phone accounts.
"Vienna is the first major western European city to adopt the mobile phone parking payment system," said Elysabeth Mattes, a spokeswoman for Austria's biggest mobile phone service provider, Mobilkom.
"M-parking" was developed by the German company Siemens but similar systems have been tested or implemented in Scandinavia and some corners of eastern and central Europe.
The Croatian capital Zagreb was one of the first cities in the region to take to the new technology, introducing it through VIP-net, an affiliate of Mobilkom, in 2001.
But Vienna's 1.5 million inhabitants and 130,000 parking bays make next month's launch the biggest the system has seen so far.
"The Viennese were very enthusiastic when we did trial runs at the beginning of September, the technology proved reliable and there is nothing standing in the way of its commercial launch," Mattes said to reporters.
Siemens says its "m-parking" service promises to bring clients "convenience."
"You can pay for parking even if all the news outlets are closed. On top of that, your mobile phone can now alert you when your parking time is about to expire," a spokesman explained.
"The phone will ring 10 minutes beforehand, and if the client is having lunch he no longer has to leave the restaurant to deal with the problem, he can just prolong his parking time by typing more minutes into his mobile."
Clients can choose whether they want to pay for their parking as part of their phone bill, have the amount debitted from their credit cards or run a special account with the mobile phone operator.
They can also print out their bills by typing in a special password on the "m-parking" Web site.
Mobilkom estimates that in the medium-term 40 to 50 percent of all parking in Vienna will be paid by mobile phone, even though it is more expensive.
Each text message will add US$0.12 to US$0.24 to the cost of parking your car, which costs upwards of US$0.80 per minute in Vienna.
In a country where 85 percent of the population have mobile phones, Mobilkom believes "m-parking" will rapidly spread to other cities after its Oct. 1 launch here.
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