FAQ

• What is the company's core business?
• Why is it necessary to establish a subsidiary? Why doesn't Toll Collect assume responsibility for the export business?
• What does GNSS/GSM stand for?
• How does satellite based toll collection work?
• Does the OBU also work with Galileo?
• What are the main advantages of satellite solutions?
• What other technologies exist/are available for road charging? What are the main advantages of a GNSS-based system?
• How can the system/platform be open for value added services?

Tailored to specific national requirements, Satellic handles a number of different tasks:

• Development and operation of electronic toll systems based on satellite technology
• Technological advancement, i.e. migration from microwave to satellite technology
• Set-up and management of operator companies for electronic toll systems (independent of technology)

As a company with a specific purpose, Toll Collect is responsible for the installation and operation of the truck toll system in Germany. Any questions concerning the operator's contract will gladly be answered by the press office of Deutsche Telekom AG, a member of the Toll Collect consortium. Satellic develops and installs the required technology and will assume responsibility for toll collection operations in the respective country. In order to handle this task, Satellic is planning to set up partnerships with local companies. This can best be accomplished if Satellic operates as a separate, independent enterprise.

GNSS stands for Global Navigation Satellite System such as GPS. GSM stands for the well known Global Standard for Mobile Communication used by most Cellular Networks in the World. A satellite based Electronic Toll Collect System uses GNSS/GPS for positioning and GSM for mobile communication with a central system. Other toll systems are based on gantries in each road segment where passing vehicles are detected or on metering the hodoscope pulses in a simple OBU.

The main scheme is simple. The core technical element of the satellite-based toll system is the On-Board Unit (OBU) used to collect a route-dependent road toll. With the aid of satellite positioning (GPS, Galileo), a compact computer installed in the vehicle calculates the distance travelled on a toll route. The OBU calculates the amount of toll payable and sends the data via mobile communications (GSM) to a computer centre for invoicing. But no system will be the same like another one. Every country will have different requirements, which will influence the construction of the individual systems.

In principle, the OBU concept enables the integration of different global navigation solution systems such as Gallileo. Satellic´s OBU Next Generation (OBU NG) will be Gallileo-ready as soon as the required Gallileo technologies and services are available and in a relaibale operation status.

• Satellite system is implemented very fast, much faster than a microwave system
• Flexible tolling – very easy extendability by upgrading digital map in OBU is an essential feature in dealing with traffic evasion from sections subject to toll
• No need for expensive road side tolling infrastructure – microwave solution must build gantries at every exit and entry point (not suitable for nationwide tolling systems due to high costs)
• Investment protection (no need to migrate to a Galileo standard in the future, satellite is the standard system)
• Interoperability – EU requires the European Electronic Fee Service (EFS). Field demonstration have been carried out in Elsas, where interoperability was demonstrated. Microwave solutions are not interoperable with satellite systems
• EU backing (directive 52 / 2005 EC) – EU recommends satellite due to its versatile features used not only for toll collection, but instead for intelligent traffic management. A transition path to Galileo is drafted compulsory for all after 2009.
• Telematic platform – satellite tolling is not only a money box, but a tool of proactive traffic management. By having every vehicle subject to toll equipped with an OBU, a nationwide telematic platform is created. Services such as fleet management, real time traffic information, etc. can be used. Governments can possess such a platform and regulate the access to it (e.g. through a service node) – access fees to the platform raise government revenue – and offer some public services itself – e.g. real time traffic info increasing traffic safety
• Security aspects – services like dangerous goods monitoring can be implemented additionally
• Satellite solution reacts the best to megatrends of the future (extension of roads subject to toll, extension of vehicles, proactive traffic management, congestion management, increasing traffic safety)
• Satellite is a proven technology – combination of two proven technologies
• Almost every vehicle today is equipped with a navigation system functioning trouble free. A GSM mobile module is implemented to it making sure that the recognized road sections are transfered to the central system
• Obstacles in concrete projects have nothing to do with the technology as such, instead they come from the project management environment
• see the German Toll Collect system for example of satellite system

Actually working tolling solutions for dedicated roads (road user charging) are Vignette-, DSRC- and GNSS-systems. For zone-based tolling e.g. “city toll” there are video-based systems and DSRC-based systems in use. Advantages of the GNSS-based system: no roadside infrastructure needed, flexible, extendable, future-oriented, platform for value added services, distance-based, fair, a tool for intelligent traffic management (tariffs can be differentiated to time, location, vehicle class).

The GNSS/GSM tolling platform can be used for full integration of VAS sharing the same resources such as GNSS, GSM CPU and memory.
It would need to add a certified secure software interface both in the OBU as well as at the backend side to isolate the various data flows of different services and applications and ensures that no harm can be done due to conflicts of requests for resources. On the OBU side, this would include some added basic functionality of the software plus some added physical interfaces that can be used to connect to other not tolling relevant equipment in the vehicle. Such interfaces could be any of the typical automotive bus systems e.g. CAN but possibly also USB or wireless interfaces like Bluetooth. Additional equipment could be anything from devices already installed in a vehicle like crash sensors for e-call, load sensors, sensors for brakes, engine, bearings, but also specific sensors for e.g. tank vessels like temperature and pressure. And of course, it could also be any intelligent device like a small computer or PDA that would run specific intelligent applications for some special services and would only rely on e.g. some data like position exported from the OBU and of basic ressources like communication via GSM or DSRC and cryptography offered by the OBU via the secure ITS software interface.