Telekom Austria’s mobile subsidiary, mobilkom austria, has today launched jointly with Vodafone Germany the first cross-border interoperable service for purchasing train tickets via mobile handsets.
Working with ÖBB, the Austrian Federal Railways, and CityNightLine, a German subsidiary of the German Railway, mobilkom austria and Vodafone Germany have made m-commerce transactions across countries a reality.
Hannes Ametsreiter, mobilkom austria’s Management Board Member and Chief Officer for Marketing, Sales and Customer Service said: “With this world’s first mobilkom austria and Vodafone Germany are opening up a new dimension in m-commerce.”
One of the fundamental problems in m-commerce has been to offer seamless services across different countries because of the difficulties in unifying different billing systems. Through the close cooperation of mobilkom austria with Vodafone Deutschland, the ÖBB and CityNightLine, transnational m-commerce transactions have now become reality: tickets for trips from Austria to Germany or the other way around can be booked and also purchased via mobile phone. This first interoperable service in the world will not only increase take-up of mobilkom austria’s m-ticket application, but will also pave the way for further major, cross-border m-commerce projects.
Dirk Hemmerden, Director Business Unit Vodafone live! said: “Once again, Vodafone Germany and mobilkom austria are jointly taking on a technological and innovative pioneering role in mobile communications, which is hard to match internationally.”
Mobile train tickets are easy to obtain by text-messaging the desired destination to mobilkom austria’s text message ticketing service number +43 664 660 6000 for Austrian customers and to the Vodafone’s short-code 2600 for German customers or via the mobile Vodafone live! portal.
All mobile phone users in Austria can have access to the mobile payment service paybox (www.paybox.at), which enables customers of all Austrian network operators to pay with any mobile phone (irrespective of whether this is by prepaid card, contract or company phone). German Vodafone customers can pay via credit card.