Austria ready for eCall

Creation date: 13 December 2006

Results from the Austrian eCall pilot project show that 72% of eCall alarm messages were handled within two minutes, with a further twelve percent handled within 4 minutes, meaning that in 84% of cases help could have been on the way in less than four minutes.

The trials also showed that more than 60% of drivers would agree to pay €9 - €14 per month for an eCall subscription which would allow them to get prompt support in case of an accident or an emergency. Moreover, almost 50% of drivers were willing to pay at least €300 for the eCall hardware and installation.

The pilot project also found a willingness among drivers to pay for addition add-on services to eCall, with 71% saying they would pay for breakdown assistance via the system, 61% interested in receiving travel information and 20% willing to receive weather information.

The pilot project was conducted by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology together with Dolphin Technologies, ÖAMTC and Mobilkom Austria between July and September 2006.

In the test scenario, when an eCall alarm is triggered, the ÖAMTC operation centre is informed in two different ways. It receives an SMS message, which is reformatted into an email containing relevant data about the driver and the vehicle, as well as the position of the vehicle emitting the alarm. At the same time, a voice call to a dedicated operation centre telephone number is triggered, with an integrated voice processor informing about the reason of the alarm (accident, emergency, theft) and the identity of the vehicle.

Volunteers for the eCall project were sought by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology through public advertisements. The 100 selected volunteers then had eCall technology installed on their vehicles and had to trigger at least 10 alarms by using the emergency button.