Telekom Austria to Charge Electric Cars from Telephone Booths

Telekom Austria is launching a prototype telephone booth with an integrated charging station for electric cars. Following commercial launch, charging stations will offer the possibility to pay via mobile phone using text messages, paybox or a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) card with a RFID chip.

Telekom Austria Group's charging stations will leverage the existing infrastructure: Currently, the company operates roughly 13,500 telephone booths countrywide, of which 700 are multimedia stations. In the first rollout phase, the focus will be on multimedia stations that offer on-street parking opportunities for electric vehicles. By installing additional charging points, each telephone booth will be able to recharge more than one vehicle at a time. By year-end 2010 a total of 30 charging stations will go on stream.

Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO Telekom Austria Group, said: "We are bundling our strengths from different corporate segments to realize this highly innovative project: We are combining the company's fixed net infrastructure with our long-standing expertise in the mobility area, for instance, with successful services such as mobile parking. This also applies to mobile payment and identification systems, where we can rely on the proven industry track record of paybox austria."

The company added that it will use renewable energy to operate its charging station network.